Nate Gray, who served two years as an Island Institute Fellow on Peaks Island, began a Senior Fellowship on Fishers Island, NY, in January. Gray will work with the community to inventory community assets and explore ways to enhance local communication and information management in order to bolster the year-round community of 200 people.
“We’re very excited to be working with Fishers,” said Nathan Michaud, Programs Department Manager at the Island Institute. “They’ve shown a lot of energy and initiative down there. We expect that they can learn a lot from the Maine’s year-round islands, and that Maine’s islands can learn from Fishers. Like every one of Maine’s islands, Fishers is both really unique and similar to other islands, in that they’re facing a lot of similar issues.”
Although Fishers is officially a part of the town of Southold, NY, on Long Island, its ferry comes and goes from New London, Connecticut, which is much closer.
Gray, who is from Portland and received his BA in biology from Hamilton College, assisted the Peaks community in developing their first comprehensive neighborhood plan and creating the Peaks Information Exchange (PIE), an innovative structure for the management and dissemination of scientific, historical and cultural information about Peaks Island.
A steering committee of year-round islanders will oversee Gray’s fellowship. So far, he has been busy meeting community members and working with the steering committee to develop a work plan. Possible outcomes for Fishers that have been discussed so far include the development of a sustainable community newsletter and a centralized community office.
“The entire Fishers Island community has been really supportive and I’m really looking forward to working with them during the next eight months,” Gray said. The new fellowship on Fishers Island, which is fully supported by the Sanger Fund (a local endowment for community development), is the Institute’s first placement outside of Maine.