Current Programs

To fulfill our mission and meet our goals, we implement four year-round programs:

ARCafé: Local Foods Market
ARCafé is Vinalhaven’s first and only social enterprise and Internet café, featuring a coffee shop, bakery, local foods bistro, and fresh foods market. The café has a well equipped certified commercial kitchen that produces healthy local-food meals six days per week. In addition, ARCafé: Local Foods Market sources and sells fresh vegetables, fruit, meats, and dairy from eight island farmers and additional (mainland) Maine farms. Click here to learn more.

Fresh Foods Initiative
An integral part of the ARCafé is that it sources vegetables, fruit, meats, and dairy from island and Maine farmers. ARCafé pays VH growers retail prices for their goods in order to ensure they are able to make a viable living farming. The ARC works to support VH growers by acting as a food hub, marketing and distributing their farm goods to consumers and other island retail establishments. ARCafé’s Local Foods Market makes high-quality fresh local food accessible to all islanders regardless of income by accepting WIC and EBT and by donating hundreds of dollars worth of local vegetables on a monthly basis to the Vinalhaven Food Pantry. In addition, Local Foods Market staff work with the Vinalhaven Public School to help procure local foods for the cafeteria and also with the Islands Community Medical Center on collaborative projects such as Wholesome Wave’s Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program (FVRx).

ARCafé: Community Learning Center (CLC)
ARCafé is a Community Learning Center and provides experiential life-skills training opportunities for young islanders. ARCafé CLC offers community classes and workshops related to food preparation and preservation, healthy lifestyles, and practical life-skills, such as self-presentation, entrepreneurship, and applied science and mathematics.

Vinalhaven Public Education
The ARC’s academic program for middle- and high school students is being piloted in collaboration with the VH Public School from September 2011 through June 2012. Through this program public school students will receive academic credit for participation in hands-on, standards-based, life-skills training guided by ARC educator/mentors. After piloting the program this school year, The ARC and the VH Public School will offer it as an elective open to all Vinalhaven middle- and high school students.