LEWISTON – Empower Lewiston will meet from 6 to 8 p.m. Monday, Feb. 25, in B Street Community Center Room A, 57 Birch St. Anyone interested in receiving the quarterly newsletter or receiving meeting agendas should call 777-5144 or e-mail community@ empowerlewiston.org.

Board meetings are open to the public and are held the third Monday of every month with holiday exceptions.

Empower Lewiston is the small nonprofit grassroots organization established when Lewiston’s two downtown census tracts 201 and 204 received the 10-year federal designation of a U.S. Department of Agriculture Enterprise Community.

Communities receiving the designation were those identified as experiencing economic distress and demonstrating a strong commitment to the national Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community principles of a strategic vision for change, community-based partnerships, economic opportunity and sustainable community development.

With its USDA funding, Empower Lewiston has supported the creation of community spaces such as the Marsden Hartley Cultural Center, Museum L/A and the B Street Community Center, while partnering on educational, workforce and financial literacy initiatives dedicated to creating pathways of change toward individual and family economic self-sufficiency.

Empower Lewiston is a participant on the city’s Downtown Neighborhood Task Force, which is working toward the development of a neighborhood master plan and is also a community partner developing the Downtown Education Collaborative Center at 219 Lisbon St., a space for college-community collaboration and engagement.

With an eye to a life beyond the Enterprise Community designation, the board of directors is shaping the organization’s direction its new mission statement, “Rooted in the downtown, Empower Lewiston serves as a critical and innovative facilitator – advocating for, with, and among downtown residents and businesses to determine our well being, material security and future together” and focusing on transportation as a first priority.