LEWISTON — The Downtown Education Collaborative is closing its Lisbon Street office and eliminating the director’s position because it no longer has the money to keep the administration going.

The six colleges and organizations that form the collaborative will continue to work together, and two of the collaborative’s most successful programs — mentoring for middle schoolers and computer education for adults — will continue to operate.

“DEC is not ending; it’s just moving into a transition,” Director Sherry Russell said. “And its members are still dedicated to the downtown and to Lewiston and to Auburn.”

The Downtown Education Collaborative opened its office in spring 2008 with seven members: Bates College in Lewiston, Central Maine Community College in Auburn, the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn College in Lewiston, Andover College (now Kaplan University) in Lewiston, Empower Lewiston, Lewiston Adult Education and the Lewiston Public Library.

Members had learned about a similar collaborative in Illinois and thought a public-private partnership could work well in Lewiston-Auburn, a community that has a lot of colleges doing service-learning projects but with no coordination among them.

The collaborative now has six members — Empower Lewiston closed its doors in 2009 — and over the past five years has been responsible for a number of programs and projects. They include a children’s summer camp, an assessment of the community’s food needs and a single semester video lab for at-risk high-schoolers. The collaborative helps more than 1,000 youths and more than 3,000 adults per year.

But while the collaborative has been able to get grants to fund projects, it’s had a hard time finding the $100,000 a year it needs to pay for administration. Outside groups weren’t interested and the members couldn’t afford to split the cost.

“With the economic downturn, sustainability has become a little bit of a trick,” Russell said.

And while a wealthier collaborative member or two might be able to pay for the office and director, that would take away the sense of partnership. 

“It would no longer be a collaborative if one of these institutions owned it,” said Darby Ray, director of Bates College’s Harward Center for Community Partnerships.

Members began to consider closing the office about a year ago. Although they held off starting any new, big programs, they continued with those already in progress. The Academic Success and Mentor and Digital Divide programs continued to be particularly successful.

The mentor program recruits and trains 40 to 50 college students each year to tutor and mentor 300 Lewiston middle and high school students. The Digital Divide staffs a computer lab with college students trained to help adults improve their computer skills. About 1,000 adults per year use the program.

Both programs are housed at the Lewiston Public Library and both will stay there.

“We’ll be taking a stronger role in administering those programs,” said Library Director Rick Speer.

Although library staff will now oversee the programs, college students will continue to serve as mentors.

The office is slated to close by the end of March. Russell used to work overseas and is looking to do that again.

Members lauded her work for the collaborative.

“Really, what she’s done is seed conversations and connect people and help these institution develop as conversation partners and colleagues. She’s done her work so well . . . we now have these relationships and these partnerships,” Ray said. 

Members say that though the office and director will soon be gone, the collaborative will carry on.

“We know now how to throw something out into the pond and see if there’s a ripple or how to extend an invitation and see who comes,” Ray said. “We know each other.”

ltice@sunjournal.com

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