Ten students from King Middle School in Portland are immersed in their work, building half models of the SEGUIN tugboat. Their focus is complete as they sit on the floor or work at a card table, bent intently over the model pieces, making holes with power or hand drills or by using a mallet and nail. Their talk is limited to questions to their group’s mentor on how and where to drill holes or how to hold the thin pieces of door plywood together while “stitching” it with short pieces of wire.
“I’m done!” calls out one student, raising his hands in the air in triumph. But then, while holding the model up, he accidentally pulls the bow stitching apart. Oops. Immediately, volunteer Nick Desouza steps in to help him repair the damage.
This is the group’s first day together with the The Compass Project, a nonprofit organization founded in 2002 by sailor/USCG licensed captain/social worker Patricia Ryan. The program uses boatbuilding, sailing, rowing and other educational marine-based activities to teach job and life skills to youths ages 12 to 21. It hopes to provide them with new directions, new possibilities in their lives. Students meet one day a week after school from 2:30 to 5 p.m. Many of them sign up to participate through Portland’s “Safe and Smart” after school program. John McDonald, a boatbuilder who graduated from the Landing School and has worked with at-risk youth in residential treatment centers, serves as boatbuilder and program manager.
In 2002, the Compass Project held three boatbuilding classes, one per season, where students built Optimist dinghies. One of these boats was raffled at the Maine Boatbuilders Show in March; another was auctioned at the MS Regatta. Director Ryan says this was just the beginning of a long-term goal of the program: to help the students learn to run their own businesses. They will sell boats they build, with part of the proceeds put back into the program and part shared among students who built the boats.
Last summer, the Compass Project initiated another phase of the program, teaching students how to row. Over the summer, about 70 youth ages 13 to 18, including several Somali girls, ventured out on Casco Bay in groups of six to eight, rowing two 18-foot Grand Banks dories donated to the program. “It was amazingly popular with the kids,” says Ryan. “They took to it in a way that almost surprised me, because there is a certain level of frustration that they had to get beyond so they could learn to row as a team. They loved being on the water. Most of them hadn’t been on Casco Bay and otherwise wouldn’t have had an opportunity to be out there.”
As the program becomes more established, Ryan, who has taught sailing to groups of women, wants to teach youth to sail aboard her Tartan 30-foot sloop. “My experience teaching women initiated this idea of using sailing and boats as a way to help people overcome some of their challenges,” she says. When she later worked for a mental health agency and participated in a boatbuilding program with kids with mental problems, she decided to go off on her own and found the Compass Project.
Ryan also plans to add apprenticeships in local marine industries to give students the opportunity for job shadowing and job experience. She will ask professionals in marine-related businesses and volunteers from the community to participate as role models, mentors and teachers.
During its first year, the the Compass Project was funded by $5,000 from the Maine Community Foundation and matching funds from individuals and the Unity Foundation. In the winter and spring it received further contributions from individuals and the Unity Foundation and from the Edward Davies Benevolent Fund. This fall, it received a $10,000 grant from the Davis Family Foundation.
Last fall, Compass groups met at the Saint Lawrence Arts and Community Center on Munjoy Hill, but recently, they moved to 170 Anderson St. in Portland. There, they have a much larger facility with room to store the Grand Banks dories and other boats, set up power tools – many belong to McDonald and others were donated – and provide space for building boats and classroom teaching or meetings. The facility is still being adapted to their needs with the help of volunteers who belong to the Friends of the the Compass Project, who have put out a wish list which includes furniture, tools, a VCR, copier and computer equipment.
The Compass Project will offer three classes a week this fall: two six-week programs for middle schoolers who will build a six-hour canoe and one 10-week session for high school students to build an Optimist Dinghy. In February they will add boatbuilding classes for adults on weeknights and weekends.
Ryan, who works as a counselor primarily with youth and families, says getting the Compass Project up and running has been a second full-time job. Her efforts have been appreciated. One student traveled from Lewiston to participate in all three boatbuilding projects last year and continued to work with McDonald during the summer. In May, the Maine Children’s Alliance honored the Compass Project for the possibilities it offers to Portland youth by awarding it the Giraffe Award, given to an “Innovative Nonprofit Organization.”
For further information, contact Pat Ryan at 828-5289 or ryan2@maine.rr.com and visit www.compassproject.org.