Last weekend, Cobscook Institute board and staff members met on our campus to celebrate another year of work with two days of joyful and creative collaboration that included meals, outdoor games, and structured team-building, as well as many useful sessions to finalize our new strategic plan. That plan will establish the highest priorities for our work over the next three years as part of our mission to improve individual and community well-being.

We are rapidly approaching the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first Cobscook Gathering, and reflecting on the legacy and responsibility of that full generation and more of community work helped clarify the need for our sights to be fixed both on a near horizon and a far one. In that spirit, we affirmed four overarching goals that will guide what we do:

-To strengthen our identity and presence as a homeplace that puts well-being front and center of all our activities;

-To better support and create opportunity for exciting new ideas from our community to find success;

-To become a resource for our community and our region’s people and economy as we navigate climate change;

-And to refine our own processes and systems to ensure that we remain an impactful and stable presence for the next twenty-five years and more.

We look forward to sharing more details in the coming weeks and months about our strategic plan, and about what that means for the coming years at Cobscook Institute!