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 NY
Best Buddies Help Find Special Friendships
They say good friends are hard to find, and as you grow
older, you realize that's true.
by John Gray, The Troy Record, 2004
For more articles like this
visit
https://www.bridges4kids.org.
Imagine, if you
will, having a friend who is always happy to see you. Someone
who has nothing but kind thoughts and would do anything for you.
Now imagine that person is special. By special, I mean someone
intellectually disabled. When we were a less polite society, we
called these people mentally retarded.
When I was a kid, these special individuals were kept separate
from the rest of us. They rode in special school buses and kept
to themselves, and for the most part, were invisible. It's not
like that anymore. Now they sit right next to your child in
school, raise their hands when the teacher asks a question and
sit at the same table during lunch. Still, as much as schools
try to "mainstream," they are different and, truth be told, they
are lonely.
That's where Best Buddies New York comes in. It may be the
single greatest program that you and I never heard of.
Best Buddies is a lot like the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program
- but with an important difference. They find young adults and
match them with a person who is, as they like to say,
intellectually disabled - Down syndrome, autism, disabilities of
this sort. But not severely disabled. These are people who
function extremely well in society but lack one important thing
- a friend.
The program was the brainchild of Anthony Kennedy Shriver (son
of Eunice, brother of Maria). He was a student at Georgetown
University in 1989 when he decided to spend some time with an
intellectually challenged student. It went so well he got some
friends to do it, and then the good idea spread to other
campuses.
Today, there are more than 400 high schools and 300 colleges
with a Best Buddies program, including 12 schools in the Capital
District alone. Program manager Susanna Adams met me for coffee
to talk about Best Buddies, her face lighting up when she talked
about these special people who are looking for friendship.
"These individuals are so sweet and giving. All they want from
their buddy is friendship. And it's not a big commitment. All we
ask is that a volunteer have contact with them once a week. That
can be a phone call, e-mail, just sitting and talking. It's not
like you have to spend a lot of money or go places to make this
person happy."
Susanna says the rest of us take friendship for granted. Just
think about sitting at home on a Saturday night wanting to go
somewhere but not wanting to sit alone. That's the life of the
intellectually disabled every day. She adds, "Just to have
someone to sit with them at a football game can mean so much to
these individuals. It makes them feel like they belong. Like
they are not so different after all."
Susanna can't say enough about the outstanding young people in
local schools who have volunteered to be a Best Buddy. There's
Pamela at The College of Saint Rose and Lidiya at Guilderland
High School, who have set the example for other students. It's
funny, she says, once you get one popular kid to sign up, the
others follow suit.
For more information on Best Buddies, visit their web site at
www.bestbuddiesnewyork.org.
Most of us spend
our lives chasing money. These individuals seek love. Makes you
wonder which of us is the intellectually disabled, doesn't it?
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