Maria Dorn, who has been the executive director of the Mission Possible Teen Center for the past seven years, will be leaving the center in August.

Dorn called her decision to leave “bittersweet” and said she decided to leave because she wanted the opportunity to spend more time with her own children. While she is looking forward to having more time to spend with her family, she said she would miss the connections she has made with the kids and the staff at Mission Possible.

“The pieces that I love will be hard to let go,” she said. “But I can always come back and volunteer.”

C.J. Averill, 12, who has been coming to Mission Possible for the past two years said he would really miss Dorn. “She’s really fun,” he said. “She’s done lots of field trips, and she’s done a lot with the teen center.”

Dorn was the second executive director in the agency’s history, and during her time with Mission Possible, she said she got the center’s programs up and running and oversaw the center’s move to a permanent home in the former Westbrook United Methodist church building on Main Street. Dorn said she feels the time is right for her to step aside and let someone else take over.

“It’s time for phase three, Someone with new energy to come in and bring it to the next level,” said Dorn.

A successor for Dorn has not yet been named, and the center’s board of directors is still in the process of interviewing potential candidates. Dorn said she believed the center’s board is as strong as it has been in her tenure with Mission Possible, and she was confident they would find someone to continue to foster the center’s growth.

Doug Jones, president of Mission Possible’s board of directors, said whoever replaces Dorn would have big shoes to fill. “It will be a big loss,” said Jones. “It’s a great legacy that she’s left behind.”

Sitting in the vacant teen center on Friday morning, Dorn said she would really miss the day-to-day interaction with the kids, some of whom have been coming to the center for five or six years.

“I’ll miss that tremendously,” she said. “The haunted hayrides, hanging around here, dance nights, I will miss all of that.”

Averill said while the special events are part of the reason the teen center is great for the kids, Dorn has made the center a place for kids to go and have a safe place just to hang out. “It’s wicked fun here,” he said. “It’s a great place to go after school.”

Dorn also reflected on how much the center has grown since she came on board. “When I first started, the first board meeting I went to was how were we going to close this place because we didn’t have money coming in,” she said.

A dynamic board helped her turn things around and after quickly working on three separate grants, Dorn said Mission Possible soon had about $100,000 in grant money to help keep the center alive and thriving.

Jones said Dorn brought a lot of energy to her work, and she was a great liaison between the center and the community. “Maria’s really been the heart,” said Jones. “I think we’re going to have a hard time finding someone who is as good with the kids, good with other social service agencies and good with the community.”

While Dorn is leaving Mission Possible, she will continue to work with kids. She said she has accepted a part-time position working with the Westbrook and Windham school departments in a program started with money from a five-year grant jointly received from the two departments.

Dorn will be working in a program created to help kids who are having problems in school. The program, based at the Real School in Windham, is designed to bring those kids in and work with them in a classroom setting and get them ready to return to a regular classroom. “It’s really a unique and unusual program,” she said.

Averill said he wished Dorn were going to be staying at Mission Possible. He said he would especially miss “how nice she’s been and all of the good programs that she has done.”

While she will no longer be at Mission Possible, Dorn said she is looking forward to continuing her work with kids, and a part of her will always be at Mission Possible. “It always feels like it’s a family here,” she said. “It’s a little house, it’s a family in the middle of town. The relationships and the connections are excellent.”