LEWISTON — A downtown community center will increase its effort to help local children and teens build life skills now that a fundraising campaign ended successfully.

“Much of our continuing programs are intact, and that’s good,” said Joel Furrow, director of The Root Cellar, a nondenominational Christian community center on Birch Street. “What we’re doing now is focusing on direct services for teens and children that involve after-school programs and a summer camp next year, homework help and mentoring.”

The Root Cellar kicked off a fundraising campaign in September, with the goal of raising $50,000 in 50 days.

“We were not going to be able to stay open,” Furrow said. “What we didn’t want to do was to raise half of what we needed and then be back in the same position in a couple of months.”

Furrow said the effort collected $54,000 at the 45-day mark and $62,000 by the end of the campaign.

“I think we’re very transparent and we said it was an all-or-nothing kind of thing,” he said. “We needed to raise a certain amount of money to sustain the ministry, the programming and the community center. That not only gets us into 2014, but it demonstrates that our funding base does indeed have the depth needed to continue into the future.”

The original Root Cellar began on Portland’s Munjoy Hill in 1984, offering teen and after-school programs. Since then, it has grown to include food distribution, English as a second language classes, community dentistry and counseling.

Work on the Lewiston center began in 2005 with the purchase of an old cement-block building at 89 Birch St. Volunteers slowly renovated the building.

Furrow said the Lewiston center has grown into a slightly different mission.

“The after-school program is unique in that we are focusing on skill-building, not just homework help,” he said. “We’ve partnered to do cooking classes for teens or sewing or carpentry. So skill-building and mentoring is really the model we are putting forward, and that’s new for The Root Cellar.”

The Birch Street building is central to downtown’s youth, near the corner of Bartlett Street and within walking distance of Lewiston High and Longley Elementary schools.

Furrow said online donations at sites such as Indiegogo.com collected more then $10,000 for the effort. Area churches donated another $15,000. The Mid-Coast Evangelical Ministers Fellowship and the Foundation for Hope and Grace both gave $2,500 matching grants.

But, Furrow said, the bulk of donations came from individual donors, accounting for more than $35,000.

“It was a lot of small gifts combined and took so many people to pull this all together,” he said.

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