In the late 1990s, the small coastal town of Milbridge, Maine experienced a rapid influx of Latinx farmworkers who decided to leave the “migrant stream” and settle here Downeast Maine. Mano en Mano was founded through a combination of grassroots organizing and municipal leadership to create a stronger and more inclusive community by building bridges of understanding, fostering leadership within and beyond the community we serve, and standing for social justice, equity, and self-determination.

Mano en Mano’s mission is to work with farmworkers and immigrants so that they may settle and thrive in Maine. For us, this means not only meeting needs of community members today, such as healthcare, social services, housing, employment assistance, and education; but also challenging the reasons why those needs exist in the first place. Mano en Mano ensures that a vulnerable yet increasingly stable immigrant community in Washington County has the opportunity to succeed and has an active voice in changing systems that produce disparities for immigrants and racial minorities. We also provide instructional and support services to migrant children and youth statewide in partnership with the Maine Department of Education.

Racial Equity Statement
We commit to affirming and celebrating racial identities within our organization and in the communities we work with as a away to redistribute power and move towards collective liberation and self-determination. We do this as a way to dismantle the systemic racial injustice that oppresses so many. We build relationships with everyone in a way that empowers their voice, honors their values, and utilizes their strengths.

We commit to understand our role in this system. To achieve our mission we need to continually reexamine the power and privilege we hold as individuals and as an organization. We see this as an ongoing process that we aim to address at all levels of our work: personal, interpersonal, organizational, and systemic. We aim to uphold this belief in how we practice our values and should also be reflected in staff and board, and in our operations and governance.