Chewonki Foundation Celebrates Beginning of Next 100 Years

The Chewonki Foundation began as a boys camp founded by science teacher and headmaster Clarence Allen in 1915. The camp settled on Chewonki Neck in Wiscasset in 1918 and transformed through the tenure of its four presidents into an educational movement that uses the natural world as its classroom.

On Aug. 14 and 15, campers, students, faculty, and staff, past and present, gathered at the Chewonki Foundation campus to relax by the waterfront, play Frisbee on the lawn, attend workshops by Chewonki alumni who grew to become environmental and educational leaders, and celebrate 100 years of Chewonki programs.

The Chewonki Foundation became an established leader in hands-on, nature-based education due to innovation, experimentation, and responsiveness to broad social trends and the needs of the community, the foundation’s three surviving presidents said.

Tim Ellis, president from the 1960s to 1991; Don Hudson, president from 1991-2010; and Willard Morgan, current president, reunited with the family of Clarence Allen at the centennial celebration.

Hudson remembered speaking with Allen the year before he passed away.

“‘It’s just so inspiring what Tim’s done here,'” Hudson said Allen whispered to him.

“He was so tickled the place he started as a camp became what it did. He lived long enough to see something that started as a discussion transform,” Hudson said.

Allen started the camp in 1915 to provide a service to his students during the summer months, Deb Cook, Chewonki’s communication and advancement director, said. It was established to serve as an antidote to the urbanization sweeping the country and allow his students to access nature.

“We’ve been innovating ever since,” Cook said.

Under Ellis’ tenure as president, the boys camp that served 20 students expanded to encompass year-round educational programming. “I realized I did more for kids during those eight weeks in the summer than in the rest of the academic school year,” Ellis said.

The social trends of the time supported the initiative. Ellis’ contemporary, Dean Bennett, was in the process of developing an educational plan for Maine to incorporate environmental education into elementary and secondary schools.

Many camps were aligning with the recreational movement, Ellis said. Chewonki aligned with education. With the Chewonki board of directors’ support, the nonprofit began to experiment with different programs in the late 1960s to incorporate the natural world into students’ academic studies. “The board could see this was a diamond in the rough,” Ellis said.

“This was an incredibly creative place to work,” Hudson said. Hudson worked as counselor, teacher, and eventually president as the Chewonki Foundation transformed to a year-round environmental education organization. “There was this great impulse to be creative because we had great latitude to fail,” he said.

Chewonki Foundation Communications and Advancement Director Deb Cook and President Willard Morgan stand in front of a barn that was one of the only structures on campus when Clarence Allen bought the land in Wiscasset in 1918 at the centennial celebration Saturday, Aug. 15. (Abigail Adams photo)

Some programs attempted at Chewonki did fail, like the year-long educational program and rapid-fire week-long programs, which were unsustainable for staff, Hudson said. “We had the ability to say this isn’t working; let’s try something else,” Ellis said. The programs that did succeed, however, have stayed.

Chewonki now operates a semester school that students from across the country flock to for a challenging academic program centered on environmental education. Chewonki also works in partnership with public schools to provide programming through outreach and by hosting school groups on the Chewonki campus.

The traveling natural history program also serves assisted-living centers, libraries, community centers, and community organizations. The boys camp that began in 1915 is still going strong and a camp program has also been established for girls. The Chewonki Foundation now offers a winter camp during school vacation.

Chewonki also hosts a variety of workshops, conferences, and retreats throughout the year, which include professional development workshops for teachers.

In keeping with the tradition of innovation, experimentation, and responding to the needs of the community, Chewonki has incorporated energy security and food security into its curriculum and mission. Chewonki’s focus on food security emerged from conversations between students and teachers, Morgan said.

The Chewonki Foundation’s organic produce and livestock farm was established in the 1990s to simultaneously educate students while producing vegetables, meat, milk, and fiber. The farm was initially an insular part of the Chewonki campus focused on teaching students farming techniques, Morgan said.

The farm is now a part of the food security movement – a movement devoted to ensuring the maximum amount of people have access to healthy, nutritious foods. Produce on the farm is donated to area food pantries and lessons incorporate discussions of who has access to healthy food and who does not.

According to Morgan, the shift to incorporate food security into Chewonki’s curriculum came from questions posed by students. Students from urban areas began to ask why there was no access to organic foods in their communities and teachers wanted to give them an answer, Morgan said.

Energy security has also become a focus of the Chewonki Foundation, which has an established goal to make the campus carbon-emission-free. The first solar panels were installed at Chewonki in the late 1980s and the campus has continually added more.

Chewonki Foundation also utilizes electric vehicles, draft horse power on the farm, and wood heat. Through side-by-side use of old technology and new technology, Chewonki hopes to become a sustainable carbon-emission-free campus. “That ethic was in our DNA,” Morgan said.