It was the last regular Friday afterschool meeting for the fall semester of Yad b’Yad, a one-on-one mentorship program developed by Colby’s Center for Small Town Jewish Life, and there was clearly a lot to say before the break.

Through Yad b’Yad (“Hand in Hand” in Hebrew and Arabic), Colby students work with multilingual youth from many different countries, offering mentorship and education to many of the more than 100 such students in the city’s junior and senior high schools. It’s the second year for the program, which trains students from the College over a weekend day in the fall on aspects of cultural understanding and much more.

But the most important quality for students interested in becoming mentors is simply a desire to make a positive difference in the lives of new Mainers in Waterville, according to Caitlin Kincaid ’24, the program coordinator for the Center for Small Town Jewish Life and one of the center’s 2023-24 Student Leadership Fellows.

“These kids need a sense of place, and community, and friendship, and Colby has people that can provide that,” Kincaid said.

Students have made volunteering and civic engagement in the Waterville area part of their College experience for decades.

One of the best-known campus projects is Colby Cares About Kids, a mentoring program for local children that was founded in 2001 and has grown over the years. It is now active in 13 different schools, and between 350 and 400 students each year commit to spending at least three semesters as mentors.

The work of doing good and giving back has taken on more importance with the opening in 2018 of the Bill & Joan Alfond Main Street Commons, a downtown residential community for Colby students who are required to adopt a community project, and the hiring of Elizabeth Jabar as the Lawry Family Dean of Civic Engagement. Jabar oversees all aspects of the College’s civic engagement initiative, including the critical leadership model program, the O’Hanian-Szostak Fellowship for Civic Leadership, which began in 2019.

Through this program, up to 10 students a year are selected to receive stipends to develop independent civic leadership projects that support important community needs in Waterville and throughout the state of Maine. The fellows work in partnership with local and state nonprofit organizations and with a faculty advisor to design and implement a project that aligns with a student’s academics and serves Maine communities and the public interest.

Colby recently expanded the fellowship to include independent civic leadership projects, social impact internships, and independent studies that support essential community needs in Waterville and throughout the state.

The program’s founders, Trustee Emerita Anne O’Hanian Szostak ’72 and Michael J. Szostak ’72, recently doubled the stipend to $4,000 per student to reflect the time and effort students are committing to their projects. The funding is available throughout the year, supporting summer, Jan Plan, or year-long projects.

“There are so many different roles to play in community life,” Jabar said. “Some of us might be lifelong volunteers at an organization we care about. Some people might run for office, or join community boards. Someone might enter into the world of philanthropy in their community. I think part of the education we do with students is to think about what civic engagement is. For me, it’s how college students can build a sense of civic identity and purpose when they’re here, and how they take that with them when they leave Colby.”

The benefits of participating in civic engagement are tangible for students and the greater community and far outweigh an accomplishment that can be added to a résumé. That’s been true for super volunteer Saathvika Diviti ’25, a computational biology major. Among other projects, she has volunteered at the Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter in Waterville, at a local hospital, with senior citizens, and as an EMT with Colby Emergency Response.

She also founded the Colby Community Health Clinic, a collaboration with the Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter. Once a month, Colby student volunteers visit with shelter residents.

“There’s a lot of heavy stories there, but it’s really nice to feel that connection with someone,” Diviti said. “At the end of the day, we’re all human, and everyone has their own story. I just hope that the biggest thing people take from this clinic is that everyone’s story deserves to be heard and respected.”

This deep level of civic engagement does a lot to erase what is often called the “Colby bubble”—the idea of an uncrossable divide between Mayflower Hill and the rest of Waterville. That division starts to fade when students roll up their sleeves and get to work. Through volunteering and engaging, students are meeting people and building relationships across the community.

“When you feel you’re a community member, then you understand you have a sense of belonging and connection and are more likely to play a role in that community,” Jabar said. “It’s like a transformation for students.”

He chose to focus on civic engagement. Through the grant, the College paid him a stipend to take a shift working in the kitchen at the Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter in downtown Waterville during his first semester. Matheny rode the Colby Shuttle to the shelter, where he cooked, cleaned the fridge, and did other tasks.

“It was awesome,” Matheny said of his experience with the shelter. “It was so important to me, when I’m coming to a new environment and a completely different region, to not just be on campus, but to be in Waterville itself.”

Over his college career, his interest in the community has influenced his academic work, and vice versa. Matheny studied Maine criminal justice reform and then volunteered as a court observer to learn what could make the system more effective and just. He also has worked with a group trying to bring parole back to Maine and has been involved with an archive project collecting people’s stories of incarceration.

Matheny has lived in the Bill & Joan Alfond Main Street Commons for the past two years. He’s currently serving as an Alfond Commons Peer Leader, working with staff, faculty, and other residents of the commons to facilitate in-person reflection on civic engagement.

“It’s been really interesting to get people to think more critically about what volunteering means, and the ways they interact with the community,” Matheny said. “One of my favorite things is to hear about people’s random interactions they’ve had in downtown Waterville that they’ve enjoyed. And finding out what about this work helps them feel connected to this place.”

Those questions always elicit valuable responses from the students. They’re helpful for him, too, as he thinks about being not just a Colby student but also a Waterville resident. Matheny’s experiences, as well as the network of friends he’s made living downtown and through his civic engagement work, have led to a richer college experience.

“I have these really solid relationships that I’ve built and that I will come back to Maine for,” he said. “We all benefit from stronger communities and working together,” he said.

The work encompasses a range of organizations and activities. Some spend time each week mentoring students or working in the kitchen of the Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter, like Matheny. Others simply take part in one of the days of service Jabar helps organize every month during the semester for any nonprofit group that needs a lot of hands to help with a task.

For instance, many students help the South End Neighborhood Association with its spring and fall community cleanups, assist the Alfond Youth & Community Center with its annual Festival of Trees, or sort seeds for the Waterville Seed Library, which makes vegetable seeds available for free to community members. For big service days where lots of muscle is needed, Jabar works with Colby Athletics to recruit entire teams.

Colby has an active volunteer presence at the Waterville Public Library, where students shelve books, run a coding camp, and help with children’s programming, among many other things. A few years ago, Colby students helped revive a good idea that had grown dormant: the seed library. The College is now a partner in the project, and each spring semester students pack the seeds purchased from Johnny’s Selected Seeds of Winslow and Fedco of Clinton.

“When we’re bringing Colby students into the fold of working with us at the library, everybody wins,” said Tammy Rabideau, director of the Waterville Public Library. “We’re part of the student’s education of life. They’re going to go out and do whatever they do in the world. Hopefully, being in a place like a public library is a real, and humble, experience, hanging out with humans and learning how powerful it is to provide access through resources.”

Trained tutors from the Farnham Writers’ Center also offer their services at the library. Student tutors host drop-in hours, helping community members, students from Kennebec Valley Community College, and English-language learners with their writing skills.

The student tutors take a semester-long graded course to qualify and have skills and expertise they are glad to share more broadly, said Ghada Gherwash, assistant professor and director of the Farnham Writers’ Center.

“It’s really interesting to see how people are utilizing it,” she said. “And the students feel like they’re giving back to the community. This is a meaningful thing for them. It’s bridging the gap that we see between Colby and the community.”

Ishani Wakhlu ’25, a psychology and education double major, is excited about starting an innovative afterschool project this spring at the George J. Mitchell School in Waterville that incorporates LEGOs in learning developmental skills.

Wakhlu got the idea for the project in high school while working for an organization that helped children learn about concepts in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics through LEGO projects.

“I started to notice there were a lot of developmental and executive functioning skills that were being developed through the LEGO-building process, like collaboration, time management, and working independently—all these developmental skills that are really important for young children,” she said. “It was really cool to see because that wasn’t the focus of the program.”

When she learned about the O’Hanian-Szostak Fellowship for Civic Leadership, she wanted to recreate that experience in Waterville. For her project, Wakhlu has brought together Colby students to lead the program, which has generated enthusiasm among students and parents from the elementary school.

“They think it’s going to be very popular,” she said. “Everybody loves LEGOs. My hope is that by using LEGOs and having this low-stakes, fun, learning-based environment, it’ll give kids a chance to be more vulnerable and take more risks. And I’m hoping we can do some goal-setting with them as well, so they can each say, ‘OK, today I want to be able to work with a new friend,’ or ‘I want to be able to finish this by myself.’ ‘Today I want to be able to ask my teacher for help.’ Just all these small things that are really important developmentally that they can have fun with while playing with LEGOs.”

“It’s important for me to have that conversation with students about the relationship-building for the College and our office,” Jabar said. “You will graduate, but the College stays, and we want to maintain those relationships and be of service to the community in all the ways that we can, and do it responsibly.”

That idea resonates with Diviti.

“One of my biggest things when I started the clinic was that I really wanted it to be sustainable. I didn’t want it to be something that fell apart as soon as I left. I’m really happy that we were able to establish an infrastructure to keep it going,” she said.

It also helps to show students that their two- or three-hour-a-week commitment to Waterville has lasting value.

“We need to understand how many nonprofits in this rural community rely on volunteers to do the bulk of the work,” Jabar tells students. “You are part of a team of people getting really important work done. You may only be seeing the two hours a week that you spend shelving books in the library, for example, but it’s part of a bigger picture of advancing and sustaining the mission and goals.”