Discovering Best Buddies: The international organization which started as a Georgetown student club

Since high school I have been very much involved in NGOs, working with Indian orphanages, volunteering at the Besta neurological center in Milan, as well as interning for the RFK Center for Human Rights in DC.

However, one area where I was lacking was my involvement in Georgetown University specific NGOs, until I stumbled upon Best Buddies, through some peers in my Moral Leadership class. As a little side track, here’s a MSB junior’s tip: if you have not taken a class with Professor Bies you might as well not have gone to Georgetown. Seriously – go to MyAccess right now and sign up for the next available one.

I’m talking about Best Buddies. Best Buddies is, in fact, the world’s largest organization dedicated to ending the social, physical and economic isolation of people who suffer from IDD. To put in into more understandable terms for those of you who are not too good with acronyms, I’m talking about people with Down’s syndrome, autism, Williams syndrome, Fragile X, traumatic brain injury and all the other undiagnosed disabilities. The fact is that even if you do not discriminate against them directly, by isolating them you are doing something far worse to the people affected by these conditions: you are making them feel as if they are not part of our society.

Best Buddies’ mission is to help people in the IDD community form one-to-one friendships with their peers, gain employment successfully, improve public speaking and communication skills, as well as making them feel as if they hold a valuable place in our society (which they do indeed).

I know you’re probably confused by now: you’re probably wondering what Best Buddies has to do with Georgetown. You’re probably thinking about your second cousin’s girlfriend at Penn who is involved with Best Buddies at her university (one of the 1972 chapters across 54 countries in six continents, by the way). In this case, let me bring you way back to the year 1987, when Charlie Sheen starred alongside Michael Douglas in the legendary “Wall Street”.

This was also the year in which Anthony Kennedy Shriver, a student at Georgetown University, founded the original chapter of Best Buddies. By 1989 Best Buddies had officially become a national NGO.

March is an important month for Best Buddies, as they launched their annual campaign: “Spread The Word to End the Word”. The goal of this campaign is to teach and persuade people to not use the “r-word” in a derogative way. We may not think that it’s a big deal, since it is such a widely used word. Perhaps we don’t intend it in an offensive way. Perhaps, when someone says the “r-word” they are simply making an exaggeration in describing a friend who has done something silly. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that in doing so we may be indirectly recognizing people with IDD to be different in a negative way. Being “retarded” or a “retard” is a serious mental condition that should not be joked around with. People’s feelings may be hurt through the innocent and naïve misuse of this word.

You still have time to sign the pledge to “end the word”, so get involved. It’s never too late to form new meaningful friendships.