More than 250 students participate in annual Colby Cares Day
by Claire Borecki
More than 250 students participated in the annual Colby Cares Day this past Saturday. These students volunteered alongside community members at a number of different locations including the L.C. Bates Museum, the Waterville Public Library, the Humane Society of Waterville, and the Redington Museum.
Colby Cares Day is an annual event started by students of the College in 1997. These students sought to create a day dedicated to volunteer work during which the College community comes together to support the greater Waterville community through volunteer service.
All the volunteers were placed into groups and dispersed throughout the community.
Volunteers did a variety of tasks, with the majority being some kind of spring cleaning, like raking leaves.
With the rain pouring down Saturday, some volunteers were ushered inside to do various crafts. At the Waterville Public Library, the Colby dance team spent the morning cleaning up from a week’s worth of book sales and helped the children’s librarian remove older books to make room for new additions to the collection.
At the L.C. Bates museum, volunteers created activities for children visiting the museum over the weekend, made crafts for school programs, washed windows, vacuumed the floors and made signs.
And of course, all participants enjoyed the food and games at the community picnic afterward.
At the end of the day, everyone who participated in the event gathers for a community picnic. This year, the picnic was hosted in the Chace Forum. Local vendors and restaurants donate their food to the picnic, so all food is free to anyone who volunteers.
Colby Volunteer Center liaison Natalie Guarino ’21 said the picnic is filled with “celebrating and dancing and music and children’s games… it’s a lot of fun.”
Many Colby students sign up as friend groups, but the event is also very popular with athletic teams. Volleyball, Field Hockey, and Men’s Basketball are just a handful of the teams who participated in Colby Cares Day. Families from the community sign up to volunteer as well.
Samantha Gould ’21, while getting her face painted at the event, said “It’s a good way to bring people together. And the food is great.”
Anyone interested in volunteering through Colby should email cvc@colby.edu.
