The first WindowDressers Community Workshop in the Lewiston/Auburn area took place in November and was a great success. WindowDressers partnered with Bates professors and students, local community members, AmeriCorps volunteers and Maine Campus Compact to help make 35 local homes warmer and more efficient. Check out an excerpt from this recent article about the Community Workshop, published by Bates College.

“In a classroom at the St. Mary’s Nutrition Center in Lewiston one Thursday evening in late November, every inch of space was in use.

Pine frames, built to fit into the smallest bathroom window or the largest bay window, lined each wall. About a dozen people worked at several stations in assembly-line fashion, taping the sides of the frames, wrapping the frames with polyolefin film, heat-sealing the film into place, and finishing the frame with weatherstripping.

The final product: an easy-to-install window insert that keeps homes well-insulated in the winter cold and brings down heating costs…

Based in Rockport, Window Dressers has saved Maine residents, from Berwick and Blue Hill to Wells and Wiscasset, upwards of $2.2 million in heating fuel. To keep the inserts inexpensive, the nonprofit asks purchasers to volunteer at community workshops to assemble them. Window Dressers operates in towns all around the state; this year was the first that it had a workshop in Lewiston…”

Read the full article here.