Set for Success Fundraiser
TELL IT!
A Virtual Night of Storytelling and Spoken Word to Raise Funds
for “SET FOR SUCCESS” for RSU1
Saturday, June 27, 7:00 pm
BATH — Midcoast Community Alliance is pleased to present an online fundraiser for Set for Success 2020, taking place this Saturday, June 17. The event will feature storytellers, inspired by the Moth Radio-style storytelling, with poetry, music and humor.
The event will be emcee’d by Morse High School English Teachers Johnna and Brian Stanton, and features stories by community members and special guest Elizabeth Peavey, an award-winning writer and performer from Portland. Peavey graduated Morse High in 1977.
“I’m so delighted to help raise funds for this amazing effort,” Peavey said. “There have always been hard times, but this year’s have been especially hard! Helping families with backpacks and school supplies, for my old school district, seemed like a great way for me to spend some of my new free time.” Peavey is a writer and educator who works with local organizations in messaging and communications, and much of her work has come to a halt in this pandemic. Her one-woman play, “My Mother’s Clothes Are Not My Mother” won the 2013 Maine Literary Award for Best Drama.
This year’s SFS will take place in August, and look very different from previous years, although the intent is the same: to provide free school supplies for students of RSU1.
MCA believes that each student should begin the school year with the same tools and the same level of confidence. MCA is purchasing supplies from Big Al’s on Route 1 in Woolwich, as it did in 2019, and MCA expects that the approximately 600 families who have participated in the program will do so again.
“The pandemic has made this year extremely difficult for so many local families, we know that our reach needs to be just as wide,” said MCA director and founder Jamie Dorr. “Although we won’t have as large an event as we have in past years, we will still be able to distribute school supplies to any family that needs them. The logistics may be a bit different, but the impact will be the same.”
Fundraising has been a challenge, and MCA is reluctant to ask so many of the small businesses who have generously supported SFS in the past to do so again.
“I initially had the fundraiser idea while listening to a Moth Radio Hour broadcast on Maine Public,” said event organizer and MCA volunteer Lorry Fleming. “My son is a video editor, and I thought, what if we had folks tell stories, to their cameras at home, and we edited them together, with some live elements? And then poetry and music and humor all filtered in! It’s a cross between a Moth night, and a community talent show. How could it not be fun?”
Attendees, viewing the event at the MCA YouTube page, will be able to make donations via text, and will also be entered to win gift certificates from The Fountain creamery and deli and Centre Street Baking of Bath.
Set for Success, according to Dorr, is for “everyone in the RSU1 community, from homeschoolers to high schoolers, but it offers much more than notebooks and backpacks.”
Midcoast Community Alliance was formed to promote mental health awareness, reduce stigma and increase support for families in need, and Dorr sees MCA’s Set for Success project as a way to build strong family foundations.
DETAILS:
Online at the Midcoast Community Alliance YouTube Page
7:00 pm, Saturday June 27
Donations may be made by TEXTING Set4Success to 71777