BELFAST — The Game Loft recently reached the $40,000 fundraising goal it set for its annual appeal, the largest fundraising event to date. Last year, the Game Loft set and reached a goal of $30,000 during its annual appeal.

The Game Loft is an award-winning nonprofit out-of-school program founded in 1998 that serves Waldo County youth aged six through high school graduation.

The Game Loft offers a plethora of board games for members to choose from, though none are of the electronic variety. In addition to games, there are a wide array of non-gaming activities available to teens in the program, including speaking tournaments and mock sword fights.

The Game Loft’s mission statement is: 

“The mission of the Game Loft is to promote Positive Youth Development through non-electronic games and community involvement,” according to their website. 

Also on the website is a description of what the founders' vision for the program is.

“Our vision is a community where all people are valued regardless of age; where youth become resources with meaningful roles and responsibilities for positive community change; where disabled youth, juvenile offenders, the bullied, the ostracized, and all who feel voiceless are heard and respected; and where willing volunteers of all ages work to improve the life of their community.”

Patricia Estabrook, who is among several founders of the Game Loft, which is at 78 Main Street, said of this year’s appeal, “This is the best year we’ve ever done by quite a lot and we’re very, very happy.”

The annual appeal is made around the first of December, with the pertinent information mailed to a large group of supporters.

Allison Harrell, marketing and development coordinator for the Game Loft, said the appeal is also made online, through social media, and their e-newsletter. Harrell said that the mailing list “is the big catalyst for the majority of donations that come in.”

Patricia Estabrook said the Game Loft has a fairly large mailing list, “and we’re very lucky because the community is such that they’re very generous to us,” she said, adding that the relatively modest donations they receive are also heartening:  

“To raise $40,000 with donations under $100, because almost every donation [was] under a hundred dollars. So that means we have supporters all over the place and we’re extremely grateful because that means that we have really gotten the word out to people, and this is a very caring community, that really cares about kids,” she said

Fellow co-founder, Ray Estabrook, said the funds, which are used to support a range of different programs, are designated for different purposes. A large portion of the funds are used to support the core program at the Game Loft, including the kitchen operation, food service operations, staff, supplies and other needs of the core program.

“That’s the major way we support the core program because we do not receive any designated funds from state or federal agencies for that purpose, we’re totally donor driven and supported by what we call our family of friendly foundations,” he said.

Patricia Estabrook said of the annual appeal:

“[It] means we can support our kids and have all their programs be free, and that’s really important. We don’t want any barriers to kids being able to participate in this program because they can’t afford to come. So that means we can feed kids every day, and we have a full hot meal every day and two on Fridays. And we’re open from 2:30-6 every weekday and until 8:30 on Fridays.”

Food Service Manager Natasha Kendal is the person in charge of feeding members of the Game Loft and was actively working on a steak and cabbage meal during the interview.

“She prepares delicious, nutritious meals, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, and snacks all four of those days. In addition to that, she’s got to provide food for our off-site services, including Mount View programming, and that includes making sure that we have the food ready for the birthday parties in the kids' programs,” he said.

The Game Loft also offers fruit and veggies anytime. Monday through Thursday the group must abide by federal guidelines which stipulate the food be balanced and nutritious, but on Friday they are free to eat as they choose.

“On Friday nights when we’re open until 8:30, we have a program called Foodie Fridays, and we have a community volunteer who organizes volunteers to come in and prepare the meal for the kids. We can do anything we want Friday nights because we don’t have to abide by the federal regulations, so we kind of go over the top sometimes, with great desserts and things. We’re not too picky.”

Ray Estabrook said that Kendal does a “really wonderful job” of running what is essentially a restaurant.

Providing food is an important aspect of some of the basic needs provided by the Game Loft.

“This is an important part of the program ‘cause the fundamentals of the program are friends, food, and safety, and once you got that hierarchy of needs done, the basics, then you can move onto the higher order accomplishments, which are volunteerism, belonging, and ownership, and that’s what you see a lot going on here. And as they stay with the program for a long time you start seeing mentoring, leadership, and mastery. So those are the three levels of accomplishments in the program,” he explained.

The Game Loft, which is open 50 weeks per year, five days per week, and occasionally on weekends, also gives area kids a ride home at the end of the day. The group has two vans, one of which was donated by Darlings, is committed to the Game Loft’s I Know ME program, which is part of their rural program through Waldo County.

I Know ME

The I Know ME program, which is supported by the Lerner Foundation, begins with a group of 10 kids that enter the program in seventh grade and will continue together through high school graduation, should they choose.

The program is now in its second year and consists of 20 students, all from Mount View Middle School, though next year the current eight grade members will be moving to high school. The program is designated for a single school system, making it available only through the Mount View school system.

Taking place every Tuesday and Thursday, I Know Me Program Manager Stephen Colby holds groups both at the school and in the community. Colby began at the Game Loft as a seventh grader before becoming a teen mentor and ultimately moving to his current position.

The I Know ME program is also designed to take trips across the state, with the goal of visiting each of Maine’s 48 state parks over the eight-year cycle of the program.

“In the course of eight years we will have visited all 48 state parks, we will have volunteered all over the state, we will have gone to six food festivals, a variety of other kinds of things, so that kids really get an idea of what their state is about and why it’s important to be here,” Patricia Estabrook said.

Birth of the Game Loft

Patricia and Ray Estabrook said the original intent of the Game Loft was to get the teenagers who liked to come to their retail game store All About Games to play non-electronic games after school, out of the way of customers trying to buy the games.

All About Games opened in 1996 and according to their website was immediately a “magnet” for kids because of its in-store gaming.  

By 1998 the store was so filled with kids and teens that they decided to move it next door and turn its original location into the Game Loft, a nonprofit organization.

“We decided it was necessary to move them out, and when we opened, we had maybe 25 kids who were here all the time enjoying the program. And we had no funding, we started with $1,000 grant, we thought we were in the money, and now we serve 270 kids,” Patricia Estabrook said, adding, “not every day of course.”

The Game Loft is open for a wide age range, with Mondays dedicated to kids six through 12 and the rest of the week open to kids aged 13 through high school graduation. Though most of the kids they serve come from Waldo County, Patricia Estabrook said it’s not uncommon for vacationing kids to drop in.

There are only six rules that frequenters of the Game Loft must abide by, including respect each other, no throwing things, no stealing, no swearing, no physical contact, and pick up after yourself.

Patricia Estabrook said that although in the Game Loft’s younger years they often had to ask kids to leave after breaking the rules, that is no longer the case.

“It was rough and wild for a while, and we would have to say to kids, you have to leave and you can come back tomorrow, but today you’re not ready to be here. And we’ve maintained that policy that if we ask you to leave you’re welcome back the following day. We haven’t thrown anybody out in a couple of years, they’re just really that able to be here and abide by our rules, so it works,” she said.

A Night at the Game Loft

For the younger kids attending the Game Loft, their Monday night will include mostly games and food along with teen mentors and volunteers.

For those in the 12 and up program, there are a variety of things Game Lofters can engage in, including a youth board that is empowered to make decisions about what happens there. The youth board also raises funds, including funding so that every member of the Game Loft can have a t-shirt. The group was also in charge of designing the t-shirt and helped select two members to go to Washington D.C. for a week in July for Citizen Washington Focus.  

“We’re a 4-H affiliated program, and they have a program called Citizen Washington Focus and we like to send our best team leaders to D.C. for ten days as part of the State of Maine delegation and we will have a full week of visiting important places, going around meeting people, there’s also a lot of civic engagement activities,” Ray Estabrook said. “It’s about citizenship and learning about the rights and responsibilities of being a citizen.”

Another selection that the youth board assisted the Game Loft with is the two Americorps members it chose to come aboard.

In addition to offering their insights into the Americorps candidates, two members, a seventh and eighth grader, met with legislators to discuss the Americorps program and the Game Loft.

Interested and motivated teens can also become teen mentors to the younger members, something Patricia said their current seventh and eighth graders aspire to.

Other activities available to teens include a recent public speaking tournament, where participants had to give an impromptu sales pitch, a prepared speech, and a debate, and the upcoming signature event called Pax Britannica.

Pax Britannica

According to a handout about the event, Pax Britannica “is one of the most complex board games ever developed, and it has been enhanced by the Game Loft through 20 years of play. It involves resource management, negotiation, and debate. All participants learn about history, public speaking, geography, and economics. Teams include Great Britain, Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Japan, the United States, Turkey, Italy, and China.”

Patricia Estabrook said, “it’s very, very complicated, so our kids will play along with some of our alumni and our staff and friends of the Game Loft.”

She said there will likely be about 25 people playing the game, which takes place April 26-27.

The first day of the event will feature an international buffet and teams will be discussing their strategies. It is open to the public and attendees can cast a vote for which country they think should win. Though this doesn’t determine who wins, it can have a slight impact early in the game, according to Patricia Estabrook. Since she is on the Russian team this year, she said she has chosen to make blini and caviar as her international dish.

“I’m sort of trying to get people to think, oh, well that was such a great treat maybe I’ll vote for them,” she said.

Game Lofters in battle

One of the popular warm-weather activities for members of the Game Loft is the epic battles waged in area parks. Fellow Game Loft co-founder Nikky Boyington said he’s the one that donated all the foam-wrapped weapons that got the program started.

“We can actually outfit 108 kids for combat,” he said.

The base of the “swords” are PVC pipe with foam of varying thicknesses surrounding them and duct tape wrapping the whole thing. You score in battle by touching your opponent, who must thereafter play with any injury sustained. This leads to players who must hop, or attempt to do battle missing one or more limbs.

Boyington said the way most players are eliminated in the program came as a surprise to him.

“Half the “kills” you would think is some grandiose scheme of trying to get the person [out], no, it’s backstabbing people. It’s the easiest thing to do, but when you have 30 kids out there and they’re all your enemy…” he said, before agreeing it’s pretty much chaos every time.

Program Delivery Manager Chris Donley said that the program is kind of aligned with the educational standards set up for physical education in schools, meaning the kids do warm-ups before any activity.

“We impress upon the kids the point of the game, that it’s also about self-control. They don’t have to swing hard and be barbaric out there to win the game. They have to exercise some self-control and real skill. So we teach the kids to think in 360 degrees, to always be aware of their surroundings. You’d be surprised about how quickly they learn that if they’re getting backstabbed all the time,” Donley said of the mock-battles.

Long-time Lofters

One member of the Game Loft looking forward to the upcoming Pax Britannica game is Belfast seventh-grader Damian Whitmore, who said he’s been coming to the Game Loft for two years.

Whitmore said this is his second year playing the game, and that this time his father will be playing along with him as the United States.

As for his favorite part of the Game Loft, Whitmore said:

“My favorite part would probably be the live-action combat,” which he said he’s getting better at.

For any kids or teens thinking about coming to the Game Loft, Whitmore had encouraging words.

“It’s a good way to practice your socializing skills,” he said, adding that the kids are welcoming.

Fellow Game Lofter and Belfast tenth-grader Alex Tripp has her hand in a number of available activities, from serving on the youth board to recently being selected as one of two members who will travel to Washington D.C. this July as the Game Loft’s 4-H ambassador.

The youth group is responsible for nominating who they think should be that year’s ambassador before Game Loft management makes the ultimate selection.

Ray Estabrook said all the members of the process have to agree on the selections, “but we had no hesitation in agreeing that Alex would be one of the people this year.”

“I was extremely excited to hear that,” Tripp said of learning she’d been chosen.

In addition to being chosen as an ambassador for Citizen Washington Focus, Tripp is also a teen mentor and will compete in next month’s Pax Britannica battle.

“Being a teen mentor is great. I really like working with the seventh graders, they’re actually really cool. All of them are different and individuals and I just love that about them. Their personalities, their likes, and dislikes, I love getting to know them and I really like the field trips” Tripp said.

She said she’s also “super excited” to participate in Pax Britannica.

“I liked doing Great Britain because you just get to bully the other countries. It was fun. Germany, I also observed that they were super cool, how the leader of their team just like, he was like bribing people with chocolate, and it was just so funny,” Tripp said.

Tripp also had positive words for any kid or teen on the fence about giving the Game Loft a try.

“I think it’s a really great place and you meet so many new people and we’re all super cool.”

Erica Thoms can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com