Walking down the hall with Special Education kids and Regular Education kids high fiving. Looking in the cafeteria and knowing that every seat is open to every student. This is the picture that the new club Best Buddies is trying to create in the halls of Darien High School.
The club was started by juniors Courtney Kyritz and Claire Walker. The girls attended a leadership conference in Indiana this summer to learn about how to start a club. There they spent a few days taking classes on how to organize a group, fundraise, reach out to the community, and more. The girls also got the chance to meet with other members of chapters around the country. They talked with other Best Buddies chapters in Fairfield County such as Wilton, and even hope to plan some joint events with them.
We are able to get together as a club and do really fun activities which builds a great network of friendship to have within the school, for both the peer buddies and buddies," Kyritz said.
Best Buddies is an international club that is currently in 50 states and now 50 countries. There are middle school, high school, and college chapters as well as chapters for adults in a community.
In DHS’s Best Buddies chapter there are three different types of members. The first is called the buddy pair which involves one regular education student and another student with an Intellectual or Developmental Disability (IDD). Currently, the club has ten buddy pairs. The second group is associate members who help with fundraising and are involved in big group events such as costume parties and holiday parties. The last group is the officers, who need to be a little more involved in organizing the club. The officers include president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, friendship coordinator, event coordinator, publicity officer, Best Buddies online officer, historian and a food coordinator.
Some may think that being an associate member doesn’t make you a “true” member of Best Buddies. However, junior, associate member Emily Karlik said, “At first glimpse you may think you’re not as much a part of it, but you get to participate in the same activities and events. Even though you don’t have a buddy you can still get to go to all meetings. It’s really fun!” Many of Karlik’s friends have buddies and she eats lunch with them and hangs out with their buddies. It is almost like she has a buddy of her own.
Neirad asked junior Darya Von Schmidt what she was hoping to get out of the club. “I hope to get more friends,” Von Schmidt said.
The club is already off to an amazing start. The members have hosted and participated in many events including the Parent’s Meeting on October 5th, which had a better than expected turn out and response. On October 23rd, the club sent multiple teams of four to Milford for a state Bowl-A-Thon fundraiser. Teams of four bowled for an hour to raise money for the state organization. It was a great event to start off the new friendships. Junior Lila Sullivan who attended the event said, “Bowling was so much fun. It was great to be around kids you aren’t necessarily normally hanging out with.”
The club also kicked off their ten great buddy pairs with a Halloween Pizza Match Partyn October 26th. All the members dressed up and came to the Learning Connections Room to have a spooktacular time. There were games and snacks and even a costume contest that gave everyone a chance to interact and meet with all the members of the club.
Currently, the club is starting a “friendship is…” campaign. Every member has to fill out and decorate a sheet with their idea of friendship. The posters will then be displayed around the school. The club used this campaign to make their video entry for Connecticut Best Buddies contest to try to win tickets for the group to go to a Chris Brown concert on October 30th. The contest also required every chapter to either send in an essay, photo, video, etc. to describe how their club has affected their community, or if they were an up-and-coming club, how they are going to affect the community. Five buddy pair winners would win ticketso a Chris Brown concert along with a chance to meet the singer.
The DHS club wasn’t expecting to win because they were so new to the program, but they were hoping the creation of the video would bring members of the club together. Club unity was taken to another level when Kyritz posted on the Best Buddies’ Facebook page that the club had won.
The club encourages new members to check out the fun.
Meetings are after school on Thursdays in room G207. All are welcome. If there are any questions contact either the faculty advisors: Ms. Anne Sather and Ms. Kate Curcio, or the president: Courtney Kyritz.ask.
Check out clubs that weren’t as successful getting going http://www.darienps.org/neirad/1010failedclubs.php
