Age Friendly Coastal Communities
with assistance from Anne Schroth

AFCC is coordinated by Healthy Peninsula, a local community health organization with many years of experience leading complex community collaborations.  The goal of AFCC is to enhance the lives of all people who live in the region, with a special focus on older adults.  

In 2014, the Maine Health Access Foundation awarded a 3-year grant to Healthy Peninsula to convene and coordinate community partners in creating collaborative, sustainable services, education, and support for older adults, those with chronic illness, and caregivers.  A year before the funding for this project concluded, the steering committee agreed to transition their dynamic collaboration to the age-friendly framework and became Age-Friendly Coastal Communities (AFCC).  AFCC expanded the network of participating partners to include the governments of all 9 towns in the region, the  Chamber of Commerce, emergency responders, and other local community organizations and individuals.  

To gain the trust and engagement of each town government, Healthy Peninsula staff spent many months attending select board meetings, explaining the age-friendly framework and the proposed regional approach for coordination and collaboration.  While previously the local governments of the region had not embarked on a joint commitment to work together on the health and well-being of older residents, by July 2017, each individual town government signed on to join the Network of Age-Friendly States and Communities. Because of the cooperation, trust, and successful partnerships that had developed among the partners over the prior 3 years, by the time the municipalities had all signed on, AFCC was poised to launch its community assessment and planning with a high level of commitment and engagement.  

For example, in Surry, Neighbors Helping Neighbors has several projects, and, in Deer Isle/Stonington, the Healthy Island Project coordinates programming through their Salt Air Seniors project. Each of these town-specific initiatives continues to play an important role in the umbrella AFCC collaborative, for region-wide planning, needs assessment, and more.

There are definite benefits and challenges to having a non-profit coordinating an age-friendly initiative. The biggest benefit is that the activities are coordinated by paid staff, without needing to overburden volunteer leaders.  However, this framework also presents challenges.  For example, while amazing volunteers support programs, it is harder to integrate community members into the leadership of the age-friendly steering committee, which consists primarily of partner organizations. 

While some projects have grown and others have ended, the core projects have continued to address the priorities identified by our community assessments, including:

• Bridging Neighbors Community Health Outreach Project, in partnership with Healthy Island Project and Northern Light Blue Hill

• Commodity Supplemental Food Program delivery, in partnership with Eastern Area Agency on Aging

• Dementia Inclusion projects, with Dementia Inclusion Fellow Sonya Bates, supported by the UMaine Center on Aging 

• Home Repair Project, in partnership with Hancock County Habitat for Humanity.

• A Matter of Balance with Pat Saunders, in partnership with Healthy Island Project and the Eastern Area Agency on Aging

• Sand Buckets delivery is helped by student volunteers 

• The Simmering Pot supports weekly meal delivery

• The Tele-friend Program, in partnership with Northeastern University students

• The Walk-in Café, in partnership with Blue Hill Congregational Church, Friends in Action, and Surry Neighbors Helping Neighbors