A best friend is someone who makes you laugh even when you think you’ll never smile again. A best friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are. Friendship allows us to see past the things that separate us, like race, age, gender and disability, and focus on the things that connect us. Friendship teaches us more life lessons than we could ever learn from a textbook. Friendship makes a community. Friendship plays a crucial part in the way we develop as people.
Prior to the 2014-2015 school year, Centennial High School students were given the opportunity to participate in numerous clubs and activities that value the importance of math, language, science, music and art but not the value of friendship until September of 2014, when a chapter of Best Buddies International was founded by junior, Sammie Lavin. She was first introduced to the organization by other counselors she volunteered with at a camp for children with Down Syndrome. They told her about their amazing experiences with the organization, which inspired her to create a chapter at Centennial, where its presence was much needed.
Best Buddies International is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to establishing a global volunteer movement that creates opportunities for one-to-one friendships, integrated employment and leadership development for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Students with disabilities at Centennial usually stay in one classroom all day. This classroom is located away from a majority of the classrooms' general education students, which limits interactions and affects how all students feel being a part of Centennial. Students with disabilities also are usually made fun of or looked down upon by general education students because they look or act different than most people, but Best Buddies at Centennial has created understanding, acceptance, and opened our eyes about the endless rewards friendship has to offer each and every single one of us.
Any general education student and any individual with an intellectual or developmental disability can be a part of Best Buddies as Peer Buddies, Associate members, and Buddies. This past school year, Best Buddies had a total of 50 members including 11 buddies and 11 peer buddies. Peer Buddies and Buddies must talk at least once a week and hang out at least twice a month. Over the past two years, these one-on-one relationships have made students with disabilities feel more comfortable being themselves and enjoy playing on the football team, participating in track events, or even asking a general education student to our prom.
Best Buddies has allowed all students to see past disabilities when it comes to friendship. Many students who aren’t involved with Best Buddies will now talk, joke around, and treat students with disabilities like they would one of their friends.
Chapter events such as the Halloween Party, Pancake Breakfast, Christmas Caroling, the Friendship Walk, and much more have created unbreakable bounds that I am blessed to be a part of and witness. However, Best Buddies is no longer state funded meaning Best Buddies relies solely on donations and fundraising in order to keep Chapters running. It costs thousands of dollars in order to fund a single Chapter and there are 90 chapters in Illinois alone. Best Buddies membership at Centennial High School has grown 66 percent over the past two years and has already made a huge impact in our school and in our community. Best Buddies has impacted countless lives and I am blessed to be a part of an organization that embraces the value of friendship.
“We are more alike than we are different.”
Donations can be made by going to https://www.bestbuddiesonline.org/ or contacting Amy Westfield at westfiam@u4sd.org.
