NEWPORT – Nokomis Regional High School will be home base in the summer of 2003 to a work camp, a gathering of more than 400 teen-agers from across the country who will paint, roof and repair about 70 area homes.

The Sebasticook Valley area was the winner of a statewide competition for the program, which is funded through private and municipal donations.

The teens, all volunteers who have paid for the trip through their local churches, will focus on homes with low-income, handicapped or elderly occupants. If the success of a similar program held last year in Waterville is any indication, the program will be welcomed with open arms.

“We are pretty excited to be able to do this again,” said Pat Kosma, deputy director of the Kennebec Valley Community Action Program, which is sponsoring the camp.

Each home refurbished will receive about 180 hours of volunteer labor and about $500 in materials or paint. Many of the projects will focus on handicapped ramp construction, porch repairs, wallboard replacement, deck construction, painting and roofing.

KVCAP received word Friday afternoon that the Sebasticook Valley project had been selected over an Augusta location for the 2003 program, said Kosma. Homes in the Palmyra, St. Albans, Hartland, Harmony, Wellington and Newport areas are eligible for the free rehabilitation program. Kosma said advertisements would begin next winter to recruit homes. KVCAP also will have an information booth at the Central Maine Egg Festival in Pittsfield in July.

The teen-agers involved range in age from 13 to 18, said Kosma, and come with quite a few chaperones. “At first I thought that all those teen-agers in one place would be a nightmare,” said Kosma, referring to Waterville’s program. “But they were amazing. We saw so much accomplished so quickly.

“They come in busloads from all over the country, signing up at their individual churches,” she said. The program sites are selected by The National Group Workcamps Foundation, a nonprofit Christian youth-oriented organization based in Loveland, Colo.

The NGWF puts on about 60 work camps each summer across the country. The foundation supplies $17,000 for materials and the central Maine area must match that, Kosma explained, through donations and local community support.

In addition, about 60 local volunteers will be needed to help with local fund-raising projects, hospitality, publicity and general trouble-shooting. KVCAP will be recruiting carpenters and other craftspeople, along with residents who want to help.

Charles Roundy, who recently conducted housing assessments for several Somerset County communities, said, “I see Group Workcamp in 2003 as the frosting on the cake, in that this would pick up many more houses that might not otherwise be served by … housing rehabilitation grants.”

Roundy said such grants put up to $15,000 into a single-family house in repairs but that the NWGF homes would receive a lighter rehabilitation.