Maine Public has announced the launch of Maine Public News Connect, a new news service taking important news stories every week aired on Maine Public Radio and appearing online and having them professionally translated and delivered in different languages. The  project initially will focus on the creation of French, Spanish and Portuguese translated news pods and will add news translated into Somali in early May. 

Maine Public News Connect is part of a larger Connecting Communities initiative at Maine Public with the overarching goal to make Maine more inclusive, stronger and more cohesive. 

“With Connecting Communities, and specifically here with Maine Public News Connect, we’re really  hoping to extend the reach of our public service journalism,” stated Mark Simpson, Maine Public’s  director of news & public affairs. “We want to help more Maine people access credible, reliably  reported news and information. This is especially important in an age of both information and source  overload, but also at a time when misinformation is common. Maine Public is a trusted space for news, and we want to make sure we are able reach the broadest number of people with this new pilot initiative.” 

Anyone can access these translated news videos for free every Friday afternoon by: 

• Going to Maine Public’s YouTube page at youtube.com/mainepublic 

• Visiting Maine Public’s Facebook page at facebook.com/mainepublic  

• Viewing the news pods on Maine Public’s website  

• By following Maine Public on Twitter and Instagram 

This project would not have been launched without the help of the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition,  Presente Maine, Gateway Community Services Maine, Congolese and Angolan communities of Maine. A  special thanks to the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation, cPort Credit Union, Lee Auto Malls, St. Joseph Healthcare and the Maine Health Access Foundation for their generous support of this project.  

And finally, Maine Public is very pleased to additionally partner on this project with Amjambo Africa, the official Media Partner of Maine Public News Connect.