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LEWISTON — Androscoggin Bank’s MainStreet Foundation announced that Preble Street Teen Center has been named the 2016 recipient of its annual $25K for Kids grant. The award was presented at the MainStreet Foundation annual meeting held November 17, 2016 at Cheverus High School in Portland, Maine.
Focused on its mission of providing the three essentials of life – food, shelter and security – to as many children as possible, the $25K for Kids award was presented to Preble Street Teen Center to help it maintain and expand its many services to children and teens. Preble Street is a statewide organization aimed toward providing accessible, barrier-free services to empower people experiencing problems with homelessness, housing, hunger and poverty, and to advocate for solutions to these problems.
The Preble Street Teen Center focuses on the youth and teens of Maine who have been forced to leave home, often battling mental illness, substance abuse and homelessness. Every year, Preble Street is seeing in increase in the number of youth asking for help and the increasing complexity of their situations.
“It’s hard to overstate the importance of MainStreet Foundation funding for Maine kids who really need it,” said Elena Schmidt, chief development officer of Preble Street. “It means safety around the clock, meals, health care, counseling, education and employment. And most important, it gives kids who have been abandoned and abused — who are in the hardest times of life, whose futures hang in the balance — a chance to begin to trust, to dream, to reach their goals and to find a place to call home.”
MainStreet Foundation’s mission is simple, focused and essential: to help keep kids safe, healthy, active, happy, educated and nourished. The $25K for Kids annual award is even more focused on the three essentials of life: food, shelter and security.
According to Melissa Rock, vice president and director of Marketing at Androscoggin Bank, “We selected Preble Street Teen Center because we’re committed to making an impact on as many kids as possible. When we learned more about how the Teen Center in Portland is serving as a hub for teens all over Maine, with the numbers of kids in need only rising, we were moved to help. Preble Street also partners with many other organizations that support at-risk kids, which further extends the reach of this award.”
To learn more about Preble Street, visit www.preblestreet.org.
Preble Street Teen Center was one of three finalists for the $25k for Kids award. Chosen from a pool of numerous applicants, Boys & Girls Clubs of Southern Maine, an organization focused on providing positive environments for children and teens to realize their full potential, and Safe Families for Children — Maine, an organization which hosts vulnerable children and creates family-like support for desperate families.
This is the fourth year that MainStreet Foundation has awarded this annual grant. In 2015, Longley Elementary School was awarded the grant for its after-school programming including an innovative walking school bus. In 2014, the grant was awarded to the Androscoggin Childhood Advocacy Center, a child-focused center that promotes the healing of victims of child sexual abuse. In 2013, Good Shepherd Food Bank’s BackPack Program in Lewiston and Auburn schools received the grant.
The MainStreet Foundation is Androscoggin Bank’s $1 million foundation with a mission that is simple, focused and essential: to help keep at-risk kids in Maine safe, healthy, active, happy, educated, and nourished. Four times a year, MainStreet Foundation makes grants (up to $5,000) to excellent nonprofit agencies actively working in our communities to help kids thrive. These grants vary based on the need and typically exceed $50,000 per year. In 2011, Androscoggin Bank pledged to donate $100K to the MainStreet Foundation in honor of outgoing Bank President Steven A. Closson. With this gift, MainStreet is able to offer four $25K individual grants, one in each year starting in November of 2013.
