This fall, an innovative early childhood education program and center will open in Waterville to try to help boost school readiness for at-risk kids from birth to five.  Known as Central Maine Educare, the program has received a $3 million commitment from philanthropist and part-time Rockport resident Doris Buffett, sister of billionaire Warren Buffett.  Recently Doris Buffett sat down with Susan Sharon at a Waterville hotel to discuss her interest in Educare and her personal brand of philanthropy.

Even though she likes to play up her Midwestern roots and her practical nature, Doris Buffett looks every bit like a movie star with dramatic white hair and a chiseled face who appears much younger than 82.

By her own account, Buffett is having the time of her life. And by the end of next month she estimates her Sunshine Lady Foundation will have given away close to $100 million, much of it in the form of scholarships and grants to help break the cycle of poverty.

Buffett became a fan of Educare while touring Sing Sing Prison with a former warden who worked with her on an education program for prisoners.

"He said, you know, we have 2,500 inmates here and he said all of them had miserable childhoods, and I thought here we are spending a lot of time and effort educating men at that point in their lives and if they had miserable childhoods and so on we ought to start at the other end. So we went right out to Omaha -- I wanted to see Educare in operation. The point is I'm a very pragmatic person and I have to know it's going work, and this does work. It's based on science. The Ounce of Prevention Fund in Chicago worked on the science of it for 22 years or so. I don't like to throw my money away. I don't believe in that, being a good Midwesterner and part Maine too -- my great grandmother came from here, and so I carry some of those genes, and if it works I'm all for it because we just can't afford the waste of time. We must do something about education because if we don't, we're going to have a nation of people who cannot do anything."

Buffett says the Sunshine Lady Foundation does not accept unsolicited grant requests and it favors small grass roots organizations that serve the poor and families in crisis.

Susan Sharon: "You could choose to give your money away in any number of fasions: big institutions, land conservation, research, but you choose to give it in these very specific ways. Why is that?"

Doris Buffett: "Well, I made a choice when I came into the money to either be Heddy Green, you know, and hold onto it and count it every morning and so on -- she was a famous misanthrope from Rhode Island. Or I could be living on the Riviera or something dopey like that. Or I could do something wonderful for it, I could change peoples' lives. I could give them a chance. I could give them hope and that's one of the biggest things we do is give people hope. But we always stress education because that's the only thing that's going to pull people out of whatever poverty they're in, is make yourself very valuable to the country in one way or another. The one thing we have learned in anything we've done in the last 14 years is if we want it for them more than they want it for themselves, it will never work. And we insist also on paying it forward. They have a responsiblity -- if they've had good luck with us than they've got to pass it on. And I got a call yesterday from a woman that we'd helped in some way, I don't remember and she understood this. She said I couldn't do anything monetarily but I collected 4,127 pairs of shoes and she sent them off to Haiti. We love to hear things like that, you know? You're spreading it out."

Susan Sharon: "How do you know the people pay it forward?"

Doris Buffett: "Well, they tell us how they pay it forward."

Susan Sharon: "Do you love being in this position or does with it come a great deal of responsibility that most of us can't imagine?"

Doris Buffett: "Well, there's plenty of responsibility but that's overcome by the way I feel about it. I adore what I'm doing. I feel that I'm the luckiest elderly person in the world to be able to do something. It fits my nature. It fits my beliefs and my family beliefs, and I have wonderful people working with me. It seems to attract really nice people, good people, so I never have to worry about that. I just am very fortunate. I'm going to keep doing it as long as I possibly can."

Susan Sharon: "You mentioned your visit to Sing Sing and I know you have been very involved in prisoner education including in Maine. You have done some work in the the Maine State Prison, met with inmates there. Talk about that."

Doris Buffett: "Well that's really exciting because it's redemption. It really is truly redemption for them. It's a huge experience because these men, they really want the education. And once I was at Sing Sing and I brought down an official from the Warren prison and he was sure there was going to be a riot there and I said, N'o, there's nothing to worry about.' And one of the inmates came out and was talking to me, a young fellow, and this fellow from Maine leaned over and he said: 'How many people here would like to be enrolled in this program?' And the young fellow, the kid, said: 'All of them.'"

Buffett says when you consider that it costs as much to incarcerate an inmate for one year as it does to send a student to Harvard for the same amount of time, it's clear that investing money in education sooner than later makes the most sense. Next month a new biography comes out about Doris Buffett. It's titled: "Giving It All Away." Buffett says her goal is to be slightly overdrawn in her bank account when she writes the check for her very last grant.