By Gerry Boyle '78

Rebecca Solomon '00 has helped out at the Waterville Area Humane Society since her first fall on Mayflower Hill. One morning last January, Sol-omon went to the animal shelter and pitched in yet again, walking the animals and doing the paperwork on a couple of dog adoptions, including a basset hound who came to the shelter with an ear infection. "He had his head tipped," Solomon said. "He looked like the most pathetic thing."

Rebecca Solomon '00, who volunteers at the Waterville Humane Society, is shown with a friend from the shelter

But Solomon didn't stop there. She made calls to animal shelter supporters whose names she'd culled from the Humane Society files, and she popped in on the president of a local bank to ask for his support. The goal: to establish a volunteer group to assist overburdened Humane Society staff. "I wanted to brainstorm ways that I can find some sort of volunteer base so [the staff] can get out of the status quo," Solomon said.

She knows of what she speaks.
Solomon had been at Colby only a couple of months when she went to work at the Colby Volunteer Center (CVC). That year she took over as the center's assistant director. The next year she became director, a position she's held ever since. A government major and four-year member of the nordic ski team, Solomon and the center's assistant director, Morgan Milner '00, oversee 14 programs that send 300 student volunteers into the community every semester. With students heading each program, the volunteers read to school children, tutor at Waterville Junior High School, work at the Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter and area soup kitchen and sandwich programs, and pair with area children dubbed "Little Sibs" or siblings.

I see them on the climbing wall in the field house, in the pool," Solomon said. "Students are always calling me for meal passes to take them to the dining halls."

She has participated in most of the programs run by the CVC, but the Humane Society is Solomon's pet. Last summer she did an internship with the American Humane Association in Colorado, doing public relations for "Be Kind to Animals Week." Solomon hopes to go into policy making on animal rights and to help bring about more humane treatment of pets and other animals.

In the meantime, she and the hundreds of Colby volunteers work to help make Waterville a more humane community-for humans and animals. Solomon works with community leaders and agency administrators, coordinating their needs with the available pool of Colby students. And on occasion, Solomon's study of the workings of government also comes into play.

When Solomon visited the bank manager about the animal shelter's needs, he said the Waterville Rotary Club was looking for students to take part in a new Rotary program for young people. "I said, 'Okay, I'll work with my volunteers,'" Solomon recalled. "'You help me out with this one.'"

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