Community Calendar

On Friday, December 5, 2025 from 1 - 6 PM you can travel the world and purchase artisan crafts from countries PWH serves through their medical service trips. Choose from a broad selection of items from Bangladesh, Senegal, Kenya, Uganda and more. Amazing deals and highly unique items.

On Saturday, December 6, 2025 from 9 Am - 3PM Choose from a broad selection of items from Bangladesh, Senegal, Kenya, Uganda and more. Amazing deals and highly unique items. Please support PWH!

In association with the 2026 Camden Conference, Today’s Middle East: Power, Politics & Players, please join PPL on December 11, 5:30 PM-7:00 PM, for the first event in our series, where we will get to hear from Fatima Saidi on displacement, immigration, and navigating identity.

Fatima Saidi’s specialty is storytelling. Drawing from her lived experience, she uses narrative as a powerful tool to advocate for policy change and help the public understand realities beyond their own. Through her work, she uplifts her community by validating their experiences and fostering empathy. Her storytelling builds bridges, creating solidarity with non-immigrant movements and shaping a more welcoming America where we all can thrive.

Some journeys are about discovery, while others are about reunion. Complicated routes can lead us to our roots. At the Jesup Memorial Library (34 Mt. Desert St., Bar Harbor) on Thursday, December 11th at 6:30pm, Carolyn Rapkievian will recount a once-in-a-lifetime trip this past June to the ancestral villages and towns of her grandparents who survived the 1915 Armenian genocide but whose families did not. With the help of Turkish friends and colleagues she was able to visit Husenig, Kharpert, Gesaria, Germir, Talas, Roomdigin, Sepastia, Tokat, and Smyrna in current-day Türkiye. Carolyn will share family stories, the research process when so much has been lost, and will explore how identity continues to be rooted in place beyond the years of separation.

The Middle East is a generally arid region with few rivers. But as a result, the rivers that do flow there have an outsized importance, both physically and historically. In fact, some of these resources are listed among the great rivers of the world. This talk will focus on a few of these rivers and emphasize their geographical, historical, and current importance, including the struggle for water rights today.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER: Mark Van Baalen is trained as a geologist but also has a deep interest in history. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard and is currently an Associate in Earth & Planetary Sciences at that university. Together with his wife, Louisa, he has traveled widely and led excursions to all continents of the Earth, lecturing on the natural and human history of remote regions.

ABOUT THE CAMDEN CONFERENCE: Established in 1987, the nonprofit Camden Conference provides a non-partisan community forum that fosters in-depth discussion of foreign affairs through year-round programming and our signature multi-day annual conference each February. This year’s conference topic is Today’s Middle East: Power, Politics & Players, and it will be held in person and via livestream February 20-22, 2026. For more information, visit camdenconference.org.

Coastal economies in the Gulf of Maine are entering a phase of accelerated opportunity while undergoing a multitude of social and environmental changes.

During this lecture, a GMRI expert and a key collaborator on this initiative will present how we are strengthening the blue economy and stewarding working waterfronts by supporting workforce development, investment, and waterfront access. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session.

Doors will open at 5:30 pm with complimentary refreshments available, and the program will begin at 6:00 pm. Free parking is available for all registered attendees in the lot adjacent to our building.

This event will feature our Chief Community Officer, Jonathan Labaree, and Graham McKay, Executive Director, Lowell's Boat Shop.