Blue Hill Peninsula raises $25,000 for Finding Our Voices

Michael Rossney of El El Frijoles with their “Into the Light!” offering of Mango Fresca. COURTESY OF PATRISHA MCLEAN

Originally published by Penobscot Bay Press

November 6, 2025

SEDGWICK—Finding Our Voices has announced that 50 businesses across nine Blue Hill Peninsula towns raised $25,000 for local women domestic abuse survivors in July’s “Into the Light!” Yellow Festival.

The grassroots nonprofit’s biggest annual fundraiser involves regional businesses that feature special yellow menu and retail items for the month of July; all or part of the proceeds go to Finding Our Voices. Yellow is the color of the grassroots nonprofit and sisterhood supporting domestic abuse survivors, according to board member Liz True of Sedgwick.

True headed up a local committee to bring the festival to the Peninsula in 2025. Sixty-five businesses participating in Midcoast Maine’s 2025’s “Into the Light!” brought in $32,000, bringing the total amount raised in the two regions this year for Finding Our Voices to $57,000.

According to CEO+Founder Patrisha McLean, “every penny of the $25,000. raised in the Blue Hill Peninsula went into our Get Out Stay Out Fund for Hancock County.

According to the press release, a Blue Hill Peninsula survivor told Finding Our Voices after they provided a $200 gas card, “Your help is what is getting me to the food pantry, and my son and I to our medical appointments. You are amazing.” Another local survivor said after Finding Our Voices, within 24 hours of getting a reach-out, got the lights turned back on in their apartment by paying an overdue utility bill: “I never knew you existed, and thank God you do!”

Finding Our Voices provides funding as well as access to donated dental care and online support groups to Maine women domestic abuse survivors who contact them directly and are referred by a growing network of partnering social service agencies including Families First and H.O.M.E. out of Ellsworth.

Camden National Bank was the lead sponsor of the Blue Hill Peninsula “Into the Light!” with a donation of $10,000. Eleven other business sponsors led by Yanni’s Pizza in Blue Hill added a total of $3,400 to the peninsula’s final tally.

Liz True, vice-president and dean of student affairs at Eastern Maine Community College, said she was thrilled with the enthusiastic support given by so many local restaurants and vendors, and that in addition to the huge donation of funds that resulted, “What a message this event sent to survivors in our area to know that so many joined in the cause to support them.”

McLean said in the press release there has been a sharp spike in the number of desperate reach-outs to their statewide nonprofit, with the group working out of a home office in Camden now providing critical support to an average of six women a day. “I am profoundly grateful to the Blue Hill Peninsula community, and excited that so many business owners are letting us know they will come back in 2026.”