Resources & Archives NEAVS Supporter Heads Local Student Animal Rights Group (Spring 2000) — Thinking about starting an animal rights group in your community? Take some advice from NEAVS supporter and 30-year teaching veteran Nelda Laws and just "do it." Laws, with a little help from NEAVS staffers, founded the student-run Save the Animals From Torment (SWAT) team at Pentucket Regional High School in West Newbury, MA. "We were at the Earth Day celebrations and someone from NEAVS contacted us offering to bring in videos and talk to the students," Laws said remembering how the group started. After the NEAVS staffer spoke to her students, Laws said, "The kids were devastated and said that they had to do something." And they did. Since its founding, the SWAT team has been working to inform the local community of the atrocities that many of our supporters are all too familiar with. "There are so many issues and the kids are interested in all of them," Laws said. "I try to get the kids to pick out two or three things and we concentrate on that." Some recent campaigns range from addressing cruelty toward frogs in their local pond to protesting abuse in the large commercial circus industry. Laws, herself an avid vegetarian and animal advocate, also volunteers at an animal shelter and is currently caring for three dogs and three cats, all rescued from shelters. "This is what NEAVS is all about," said Theodora Capaldo, EdD, NEAVS President. "Spreading the word is so important and by helping these students make a difference in their community, we take one more step toward a humane ethic and the end of vivisection." Back to UPDATE 2000 Series, Vol. 1, No. 1 Spring mainpage.