{"id":71,"date":"2017-02-20T15:01:42","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T20:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/watervilleprofiles\/?page_id=71"},"modified":"2017-05-25T17:12:53","modified_gmt":"2017-05-25T21:12:53","slug":"alan-caron","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/watervilleprofiles\/profiles\/alan-caron\/","title":{"rendered":"Alan Caron"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\u00a0Alan Caron\u2019s grandfather came to Waterville from Quebec in a horse-drawn carriage. He had five children who all ended up living within a block from each other, so when Caron was a child, on his walk to school he passed his aunt\u2019s and uncle\u2019s houses, the house where his mother first lived when she was married, and the house where his grandmother was born. Caron grew up in a Franco-American community in the south end of Waterville surrounded by family, and though he went on to experience much more of the world than this community, it would never cease to influence him.<\/p>\n

Caron left high school in the ninth grade and began to work a variety of jobs\u2014he worked in the mills, construction, briefly for the state, and did \u201ca lot of work in rebuilding communities and affordable housing.\u201d Eventually he ended up at Harvard, the first person to ever be admitted to the Kennedy School of Government without a college education, where he received his Master\u2019s. After getting his degree he returned to Maine, where he is now a columnist for the Maine Sunday Telegram<\/em>. Caron has also created a number of statewide organizations in the hopes of rebuilding, preserving, and improving on Maine\u2019s communities and economy.<\/p>\n

One such organization is Envision Maine, an organization \u201call about mobilizing the doers in Maine who are growing the next economy.\u201d Envision Maine sponsors gatherings that work to improve the state. Previous gatherings have included, for example, conversations on education, Maine\u2019s next rural economy, and \u201cthe only major gathering in the country that had the state\u2019s largest chambers of commerce and largest environmental and energy organizations all working together to have a conversation about climate change.\u201d The organization focuses not on a few people doing big things, but on many, many people \u201cbuilding small things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Envision Maine is an organization founded in positivity. It works to improve the state not by focusing on what\u2019s going wrong, not by focusing on the past, but by focusing on what\u2019s going well, and what has the potential to become even better in the future. Caron believes that Maine is \u201ca special place.\u201d Through Envision Maine, he works to expand on by focusing on \u201cwhat\u2019s strong and powerful in Maine\u201d and using that to \u201ccreate new opportunities.\u201d Caron says that this is \u201cwhat I\u2019ve devoted my life\u2019s work to, and it\u2019s because of where I came from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Caron no longer lives in Waterville, its effect on him is evident. He speaks of the town with love and nostalgia and pride. He recalls sneaking through the Colby science labs in the summers, in awe of the experiments. He speaks to the mix of different cultures in Waterville, of the richness that this diversity provides. He speaks especially highly of the individuals of Waterville, deeply impressed by the \u00a0\u201cwonderful array of talent that\u2019s come out of this little tiny town along the river.\u201d Alan Caron\u2019s love for Waterville has remained strong, and it has also grown into a love for Maine, which has in turn grown into years of dedication to improving the state through open conversation and compromise and positivity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Alan Caron\u2019s grandfather came to Waterville from Quebec in a horse-drawn carriage. He had five children who all ended up living within a block from each other, so when Caron was a child, on his walk to school he passed his aunt\u2019s and uncle\u2019s houses, the house where his mother first lived when she was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7860,"featured_media":0,"parent":8,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/watervilleprofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/71"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/watervilleprofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/watervilleprofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/watervilleprofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7860"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/watervilleprofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/watervilleprofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/watervilleprofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/71\/revisions\/107"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/watervilleprofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/watervilleprofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}