ADDED! Event recording and resources.
Really care about your community, our State and our nation? Want to learn about how to organize for social change, how to work with elected officials from local to national levels, and other ways of advocating?
Join Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust, the Merrymeeting Food Council, and Full Plates Full Potential for a virtual panel discussion featuring community organizers, non-profits focused on advocacy, and formerly elected officials. Join us to learn how to organize at the community level and how to work with elected officials! October 24th | 6:00-7:30 pm | Virtual
This event is being held virtually to enable a greater range of individuals to participate.
Registration is required. Visit https://www.btlt.org/events/advocacy/ to register.
The Zoom link will be sent by email the week of the event. If you need support setting up Zoom or registering, please contact us, info@merrymeetingfc.org.
Panelists
Marge Kilkelly has a long history in public service, advocacy and policy making. She served in both the Maine Senate and House of representatives, and worked as a regional representative and policy advisor for Senator King, among other policy roles. She currently owns and operates Dragonfly Farm in Dresden, ME and is working on a Maine-based cooking show featuring the connection of the land to nourishing food and our health.
Alessandra Williams (she/they) Alessandra is a member of Full Plates Full Potential’s Maine Youth Food Council because of her own personal experience and struggles with accessible food at school and her want for youth to be more involved in community planning. She is originally from Jacksonville, Florida.
Sass Borodkin (they/them) is a community organizer, visual artist, poet, and the Executive Director of Resources for Organizing and Social Change, which authored the Impacted Community Report for the State of Maine’s Ending Hunger in ME by 2030 project. Sass is also a survivor of chronic homelessness and a lifetime of poverty with a lot to say about the experience of class straddling and what it feels like not to start earning a living wage until their children had grown up and moved out. The work Sass is most passionate about focuses on creating networks for heart-based relationship building, mutual aid and peer support, and efforts that help dismantle structures of oppression that devalue the lives of people with the least amount of political power.
Scott Laflamme serves as the Town Manager for Yarmouth, Maine, where he is dedicated to fostering community engagement, sustainable development, and effective governance. Prior to his appointment as Town Manager in April 2024, Scott spent the previous six years serving as Yarmouth’s Director of Economic Development, where he worked with volunteer advisory committees and regional nonprofits to develop economic policies that resulted in nearly $100 million in new taxable value. By leveraging the community’s incredibly productive Tax Increment Financing (TIF) program, he improved and expanded critical municipal infrastructure, championed public policy that directly impact business attraction, retention, and expansion, and supported development initiatives that reinforced Yarmouth’s unique sense of place. Before joining the Town of Yarmouth, Scott held leadership positions in the City of Bath and Town of Turner.
MODERATOR
Justin Strasburger (he/him) is the Executive Director of Full Plates Full Potential, an organization dedicated to ending childhood food insecurity in Maine. He received an AB in Government and Teaching from Bowdoin College and then spent nearly 15 years supporting students from low-income backgrounds to, and through, college first at Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City and then at Bottom Line in Boston. He is a graduate of the Institute for Nonprofit Practice at Tufts University, and earned an MS in Nonprofit Management and Leadership from Northeastern University. He serves on the boards of the Maine Association of Nonprofits and Teens to Trails, and the Steering Committee for the Merrymeeting Food Council.