We are thrilled to be bringing on two talented individuals to fill two new positions at Sewall: Animal Welfare and Legacy Community Partner and Wabanaki Communities and Tribal Governments Community Partner. While Sewall has long been working in these areas, this is the first time that full-time staff will be leading each. This will allow us to deepen relationships, strengthen cross-program collaboration, and explore new ways to be good partners.

Joining Sewall as our first Wabanaki Communities and Tribal Governments Community Partner is Sonya LaCoute-Dana. Joining Sewall as our first Animal Welfare and Legacy Community Partner is Amie Hutchison.

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As an organization steeped in navigating change, we know transitions can be bittersweet. While we will miss having him on our team, we are excited for Jonah Fertig-Burd’s new phase as he transitions from his time with us as Food Systems Community Partner to work as an independent consultant, facilitator and coach in food, housing, arts, and wellness, while also growing his cooperative business, Celebration Tree Farm & Wellness Center.  

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The EcologyShifts Program has now completed the first of four training modules. This first module focused on establishing a foundational understanding of key change-making issues such as decolonizing the environmental field and outlining the pitfalls in the methodologies for establishing greater diversity, equity, and inclusion. We also collected information from cohort members that allowed us to refine the program to meet their needs.

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EcologyShifts is a community-learning and change-making experience that focuses on personal growth, organizational and sector change toward a just and equitable environmental field.  EcologyShifts officially launched November 10th and 11th of 2022 and is now 6 months into its 18-month cycle.  This brief is contributed by Deb Bicknell, Host Circle member.

Beginnings often include the unexpected. They can be beautiful, bumpy, unpredictable, tender, exciting and possible. We are learning and shifting together as a whole community which includes a Host Circle and 18 participants from 10 different organizations.

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“Fostering safe, healthy and sustainable environments is key to ensuring that all people, especially the ones who have been historically under-resourced, can live and grow to their full potential. Protecting and uplifting reproductive rights and justice incorporate protecting and uplifting the environments in which people are raised. Here, we find a central connection between the movement for RJ and the movement for climate justice.”
- Dion Mensah, Equity Forward

Reproductive justice, environmental justice, intermingling of church and state, discrimination based on sexual orientation, Miranda rights, tribal sovereignty, economic justice. All issues upon which the Supreme Court of the United States has made recent life-crushing, justice-eradicating decisions.

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Election season is coming and the importance of free and fair elections, voter participation, and a representative government couldn’t be more evident. Each of us as individuals and through our organizations – funder, nonprofit, or business - can play a role. This is a good time to be thinking about how you and your group can help.

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Hunger is a fixable problem, in our country and state. Even as we deal with symptoms of hunger through increased access to healthy, affordable food, we should also collectively address the root causes of hunger including economic, social, and systemic conditions that perpetuate inequity and injustice.

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From its start as a staffed, private, independent foundation, Sewall has sought to be diverse, equitable, and inclusive, by bringing together people of different backgrounds to advance the foundation’s mission and values. As with most of the philanthropic sector in the US, the foundation started with an all-white staff and board. In 2015 we hired the first BIPOC (Black-Indigenous-People of Color) staff member; currently, one-third of our staff identifies as BIPOC. By 2018, three of our nine board members were BIPOC; and currently we are developing internal data collection structures that will allow us to track what proportion of our resources go to support BIPOC-led efforts and organizations. These quantifiable shifts represent our work on diversity, and steps towards our commitment to equity and inclusion. As we’ve grown, so has our understanding and application of equity.

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May 25, 2020 was the first Memorial Day observed in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was also the day when George Floyd became the seventh person of color in 2020 to be killed by police using deadly force in the U.S. Nearly a year later, a jury in Minnesota convicted Floyd’s killer on all three charges. In the time that transpired since Floyd’s murder, 181 Black individuals were killed by the police across the U.S.

The verdict announcement came as Sewall Foundation continues to deepen our understanding of the multitude of ways that racism operates in the U.S., in Maine, and in our own organization and the philanthropic sector. Our nine-member staff represents diversity across life experiences, racial and other identities, and varied perspectives on issues of local and national concern. Recognizing that racial violence and the verdict affect us differently, we decided to take a few days to process individually before coming together as a group to share with each other. In this statement we offer our collective reflections.

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The Sewall Foundation will be offering an informational webinar about the Healthy People Healthy Places 2021 grant round. This webinar will take place on Monday, May 17th at 1:00-2:30 pm via Zoom. After you register, you will receive a Zoom link.

This grant round is open to organizations whose work aligns with our new focus areas and are not current Healthy People Healthy Places grantees. The webinar will be an opportunity to meet Sewall Foundation staff and get more detailed information and guidance for your application. It will also provide space for you to connect with others working to advance the well-being of communities and the environment in one of the Healthy People Healthy Places focus areas: Food Systems, the Katahdin region, Lewiston-Auburn, Wabanaki Communities and Tribal Governments, and Washington County. Please note, for this grant opportunity, our Keystone and Nature-Based Education focus areas are by invitation only.

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“The ideals of America remain unrealized. We are witnessing the consequences of intentional racist policies, practices and beliefs that have been destroying black lives for centuries.”

These words, taken from the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation’s June 2020 statement of solidarity, could not be more relevant today. The violence at the US capitol on January 6th, 2021 was an act of terror against democracy, and a clear and brazen manifestation of the logical outcomes of white supremacy and patriarchy.

Wednesday’s events shook us all personally and professionally, as they did people and governments across the globe. But they should not have come as a surprise. Our country is a victim of its own long history of embracing, enacting, and rejecting responsibility for racist policies, systems, and racialized outcomes. It is time for us to own it so we can change it.

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As we approach the end of 2020, I think back to the plans we were making last December for a year yet-to-be-known. Few years in recent history have shaken all of humanity as much as 2020. The global viral pandemic continues to take lives, weaken economies and test every system in place. As communities in the U.S. and across the world rise-up for racial justice, existing systems continue to disproportionately burden black, indigenous and other communities of color. Closer to home, Maine’s communities suffer from the highest racial disparities in COVID-19 rates.

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The Elmina B. Sewall Foundation is pleased to welcome Thomas Mitchell to the staff team on 11/30/2020. As our Finance and Community Investment Partner, Thomas will provide leadership for Sewall’s evolving impact investing work.

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As we approach the end of the year, many of us are taking stock of all that has happened (and not happened) in 2020. The headlines this year have been about COVID 19 pandemic, police brutality and uprisings against structural racism, the presidential election and natural disasters. The headlines often obscure the stories about the lives affected by these monumental events. Through our work, we have glimpses at communities across Maine. From grantees and partners, we have heard about the challenges they’re facing and how they’ve responded to the demands these headlines have placed on them. In the midst of so much that feels overwhelming, these stories give us reason to be grateful.

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We are pleased to share the final report of the Lewiston-Auburn Co-Design Team with recommendations for how to shape Sewall’s Healthy People Healthy Places program in L-A over the next five years.

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For the past 8 months, the world has been living in varying states of a global pandemic and public health emergency. The stress test brought about by COVID19 has illustrated in heartbreaking scale, the inadequacy of our public health infrastructure, our economy’s vulnerabilities, and the jarring injustice of our constructed social order. Along with the ever-present threat to individuals and communities that the coronavirus has unleashed, eyes are being opened to the centuries-long violence against the lives of Black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) individuals and communities in the US. Particularly regarding the violent and unrelenting assault on Black lives, people and organizations across the country seem to finally be acknowledging the cruel reality. Dozens of cities and states have joined their voices in declaring the toxic system of racism a public health crisis.

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The Elmina B. Sewall Foundation (EBSF) is pleased to welcome Jonah Fertig-Burd to the staff team on August 31, 2020. As a Community Partner, Jonah will provide leadership for EBSF’s evolving work in food systems and nature-based education.

Over the past 18 years, Jonah has built deep, collaborative relationships; developed new nonprofits, cooperative businesses, and collaboratives; worked in restaurants, food pantries, and farms; advocated for food and farm policies; and helped to grow racial equity in our food system. He has been a critical thought partner, facilitator, collaborator, consultant, and mentor to people in Lewiston-Auburn, Portland, Washington and Oxford counties, and across the state.

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Even as we grieve the loss of Alain Nahimana, tireless and dedicated champion of immigrant rights and integration in Maine, we at the Sewall Foundation feel immense pain and outrage as we witness the injustice, hurt, and outright assault on African Americans in communities across the United States. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Ahmud Aubrey. So many lives taken. There is no Justice. There is no Freedom. The ideals of America remain unrealized. We are witnessing the consequences of intentional racist policies, practices and beliefs that have been destroying black lives for centuries.

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The Elmina B. Sewall Foundation (EBSF) is committed to the safety, health and wellbeing of our Maine communities and as we monitor the evolution of the COVID 19 pandemic, we are remaining flexible and making decisions based on the best information available to us.

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Elmina B. Sewall Foundation is seeking a Community Engagement Consultant to support the next phase of its Healthy People Healthy Places work in Lewiston-Auburn.

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