Thursday, October 23rd 2008

By selma al-samarrai

     McMaster University has it’s own chapter of Best Buddies. Best Buddies is an international organization that’s dedicated to improving lives of individuals with intellectual disabilities through forming friendships with students. 40 countries within six continents are involved in the Best Buddies organization including. These countries include Australia, Cuba, New Zealand, and Saudi Arabia among many others. The next aim for Best Buddies is to be involved in 50 counties by 2010.

     Timothy Roche, President of McMaster Best Buddies, volunteered with McMaster’s Best Buddies for two years and is now beginning his second year as a president. Roche recounted the history of Best Buddies expansion, “McMaster’s Best Buddies has been here about 10 years… we are affiliated with a larger volunteer organization, and they are in 40 countries around the world. [Best Buddies] was primarily a college and university program and more recently it started at high schools. I went to the Canadian conference this summer and they had people from all over Canada, chapters from British Colombia, Halifax. On a number basis, there are probably more [within] high schools than universities. They’re getting a lot more people involved in it especially within our chapter in Canada so it’s really good.”

     The three most known intellectual disabilities are Down syndrome, Fragile X and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Roche explained the age group and level of disabilities of the individuals within the program. “What we try to do is match students up with people with disabilities but they tend to be higher functioning, so basically for an intellectual disability all it has to be is brain damage that happened in the developmental stages of life, like before 18. And the people we match students up with are all adults over 18, which means they’ve spent their whole lives with this intellectual disability. They are usually in their 30’s and 40’s.”

     The span of the Best Buddies chapter within McMaster is between October and April. Roche attributed that length to the lack of availability of students during the summer time, “We start right away, get new people going, bring them in for interviews, finish interviews … match the new buddies with their new student buddies and then they meet at the end of October and it goes right till the end of March. Students are usually all over the place during the summer so the commitment is during the school year.”

     As for the activities of the program, the Best Buddies coordinators plan large events a few times a year, but the one-on-one interactions are organized and committed to by the individuals within the relationship. “We promote one on one friendships so they will do a lot of different things like movies, cooking dinner, arts and crafts… we try to get our volunteers to do whatever they do with their friends with their buddies” explained Roche

     “We have two host site coordinators, that are where all the buddies we match the students up with are from. They are L’Arche Hamilton and Community Living Hamilton. Community Living supports a really large group, there are about 2000 or more people in Hamilton with intellectual disabilities that they support and provide jobs for them. L’Arche is kind of like a large group home setting. The two are actually all over Canada. They tend to have sites in different major Canadian cities such as Toronto, Niagara Falls, BC, so those are pretty big programs as well” explains Roche.

     According to Roche, the unique aspect of this international program is the potential close relationships that can be formed, “This is such a close contact volunteering situation. It’s very personal and that’s what we encourage and what you get out of it.”

Tags: 40 countries, Best Buddies, Timothy Roche