WELD – The Electronic Grange Network, a group working to redefine the quality of life in western Maine, recently announced the award of a grant from the Arcos Cielos Research Center in Sedona, Ariz.

Headquartered in Weld with offices in Buckfield and Avon, the grange works to find solutions to economic and educational barriers that will lead rural communities out of poverty and on to prosperity. The group recently opened a field office in the new Opportunity Center in the former Lauri Toy Factory in Avon.

The Electronic Grange Network applies available technologies to update the original grange concept encouraging strong moral values, reverence for the natural environment and the importance of community cooperation, according to a news release.

The grant will provide consultation, literature, computer software and hands-on instruction to develop lifelong learning tools through a traditional skills program of home economics, agriculture and trade to create quality lifestyles for rural residents. A monetary seed grant will also be provided to assist in activating the new programs.

Arcos Cielos Research Center was founded by Elliott and Sharon Maynard to develop new ideas in science, education, fine arts, global ecology and human potential development, according to its Web site.

“As an avid reader of science fiction books, I (Elliott) get many of my ideas for futuristic thinking from the literary future-worlds’ created by sci-fi authors. We recently bundled up a box of sci-fi paperbacks and sent them to the Electronic Grange Network in Central Maine,” wrote Maynard on the Arcos Cielos Web site.

According to Abe Kreworuka, principal for the grange, the Maynards’ group has been supporting the grange for about six years. Elliott Maynard, who owns a summer home on Webb Lake in Weld, had wandered into a community technology center the grange formerly maintained there and was interested in the work the group was doing.

“The need for the stuff we do is outrageous,” Kreworuka said Friday.

He hopes to use the resources of Arcos Cielos to help them market their programs for fund-raising and training purposes. They hope to create a video and photo disk to illustrate activities at the Opportunity Center.

“It’s hard to put a price,” on the in-kind work Arcos Cielos will do for them, Kreworuka said.

“They’re very high-powered people who are very grounded in helping poor people,” he said of the Maynards.