Community-supported storytelling needs YOU. 

Dear friend,

As 2025 draws to a close, we’re reflecting on an exciting year of growth and new connections.

TLDR: Torchlight is growing! We need your support. Help us raise $25,000 by December 31, 2025. Donate here.

Our youth mentorship program continued into its second full year, providing local students ages 10–18 with access to audio and filmmaking gear, media production and digital literacy training, all in a welcoming, supportive environment. Our spring student media showcase and fundraiser at the Colonial Theatre was a jam-packed, red carpet affair.

Community engagement continued through studio visits with filmmakers through the Camden International Film Festival and inaugural Narrows Film Festival, field trips to Portland for site visits with Portland Media Center, alumni at Southern Maine Community College, and WMPG Radio—as well as monthly A/V Club meetings. We ran our second weekend-long audio documentary intensive in collaboration with the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. St. George Middle School enlisted Torchlight to offer youth audio training as they developed an oral history project. Students were hired to work to cover the Youth Day of Action in Augusta, the Common Ground Fair, Maine Environmental Educators Association’s Changemakers gathering, and support Belfast Area High School’s State of the School address and multiple sports events.

Torchlight helped form the Waldo Alliance for Mentorship (WAM) with other organizations supporting youth in a three-year grant through the Heart of Maine United Way, and began hosting the Belfast Teen Center–an afterschool space for teens. Chris joined the Belfast Teen Center board and through WAM, helped facilitate an inaugural convening of local organization leaders working with youth.

All of these programs require resources for equipment, staff and mentor time, as well as rent and other overhead for our studio/community space in downtown Belfast. Torchlight is funded through grants, school support, donations, and production and program revenue, but over the past two years we have worked at drastically reduced rates in order to serve people and organizations. We have seen the great need–and the great enthusiasm–from our midcoast Maine communities. A deep and heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone who has supported us as Torchlight grew from the spark of an idea to an active and growing resource for the community.

Looking ahead to 2026, we are excited for what’s on deck! We are energized to work with more schools and students, collaborate with and support more community organizations, offer more multimedia storytelling training and equipment rentals, facilitate more oral history projects, more civic engagement programs and intergenerational connections, and pilot a participatory Belfast documentary project.

In order to be sustainable and better serve more students and community members, we need greater financial support. Your donation is much more than financial–it is also a vote of support and an important investment in our work and our community.

Torchlight programs support civic engagement, positive youth development, and community storytelling for midcoast Maine. We’re honing a model that could be applied far and wide. The feedback we have gathered from youth participants, parents, teachers, community members and organizations, has highlighted the value of this work.

Join us! Let’s build this together. Donate now and invest in our work and future.

In deep gratitude,

— Chris, Eli, Michele, and all past, present, and future Torchlight Media participants

P.S. Support comes in all forms and we’re grateful for all of it!

• Watch our appeal video (co-created with teens enrolled in one of our afterschool programs) and share with it your communities.

• Forward this email to a friend.

• Tell someone you know about the work Torchlight is doing.

• Check out our wish list.

• Stop by and say hello at 158 High Street in Belfast.

Torchlight is fiscally sponsored by Belfast Community Radio, Inc.,  which administers our grants and individual funding. BCR is exempt from federal income tax under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, EIN 36-4861541. If you’d like to consider a tax-deductible donation, click here and write “Torchlight” as the memo.