In the Down East town of Machias, there’s a new program bringing hope to single mothers caught in poverty. The program helps those mothers go to college. And Monique Morin, 21, can’t stop smiling when she tells people about it. “I never in a million years thought I was going to be in college,” she […]

They are fathers in name only, these men in prison-issued blue work shirts packed into a small room where their bulk and hulk makes three feel like a crowd. They are sitting on stacking chairs set around a folding table, admitting that they barely know their children, weren’t there when they were born, failed to […]

Kids who spend hours in the bathroom, screaming. Kids who throw chairs out of frustration. Kids who are in school, but in such deep trouble at home they are nowhere near ready to learn. To one veteran educator, there was only one way to put it: “We’re in a crisis,” said Althea Walker, the recently […]

Joanne R., 38 years old — “and pushing 60,” she said — has worked since she was 11. She graduated from high school but didn’t finish college. “I never really got past the first year — life happens,” she said. But she has never had trouble getting work. Joanne R., (the Maine Center for Public […]

Thousands of Maine children are living in poverty because of a crisis that goes unnamed. It is creating a generation of children who struggle in school, will have a hard time qualifying for a decent job and are more likely to have run-ins with the law and to suffer from mental health problems. It is […]