good afternoon and welcome back to another segment of the ads my name is julia and i'm the majority of students feel as though they have a hard time fitting in and look for things like sports or clubs that help them to get involved students with disabilities face this on more of a drastic level and struggle to find something that they love participating and this is why the best buddies club t h s was created a few years ago according to the best buddies international website the best buddies organization is a dynamic in growing nonprofit organization that is dedicated to establishing a global fund to volunteer movement that creates opportunities for one on one friendships integrated employment and leadership development for people with intellectual interest in developmental disability disability community the best body service includes but is not limited to people with down syndrome autism fragile x williams syndrome cerebral palsy traumatic brain injury and other i'm diagnosed disability the best buddies international organization founded in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine is the world's largest organization dedicated to ending the social physical and economic isolation of the two hundred million people with intellectual and developmental disabilities today we are here with nicole meyer who is the program manager for best buddies pittsburgh hi thank you for coming  for inviting me so can you explain a little bit more on like your position in the pittsburgh branch yeah so i am my title is program manager mission expansion so what i do is i go out into the schools  schools colleges high schools middle schools and elementary schools and i gauge their interest in opening a best buddies chapter so i talk with them kind of gauge the interest of students most of the time they're already involved in special olympics or they have  kind of similar program and just trying to make it to get them to understand why best buddies because it is so global it's international like you said so it's you know well known across and it's a great resume builder so you know just letting them you know understand what best buddies is get them involved what kind of audience have you found have you worked elsewhere and just in the pittsburgh area yeah i have only worked in the pittsburgh area i specifically through best buddies but i mean we are in all fifty states so a country what kind of audience have you found from traveling those different schools and everybody some schools you know the students are the ones who are really getting you know driving the movement to get involved in other schools it's the faculty you know special a director who is you know kind of really like you know find us an affair or something like that or heard it from you know another director in the area and it's like let's you know let's get moving and they've kind of reached out to us so it's kind of a mix audience wise one who is interested so like whenever you go to schools is it you're just finding like a club like for them to start or do you get like more involved so yeah it's a it's a club it's an after school program i mean you guys have was here yeah but it is an afterschool program for me during the day so me during the after school kind of just whatever fits into that school's kind of social life in their you know their clubs that they have how do you help them integrate that into the school do you help them throughout the process of creating the club or is it just kind of like your hands off after you so you with yeah i know so i'm very unsure interested into that first year so that's my job so i work with them through that first year making sure we have what we call  buddy reports that kind of happen you do kind of like a person almost saying i met with my buddy this month and we talked about this then we went to the pumpkin patch so making sure that they understand like kind of those reports and when they due and then also guiding them through we have different events that as an office we hold so just recently beginning this month we had our taste buds and then the convention center which we partnered chef and a buddy take out there and there were  chefs and they cooked together we had twenty five of them we do a buddy ball which is our problem we do a walk in the spring which is in april this year so like trying to get them to you know to put their walk team together you know getting them to come and enjoy those events with us just so we can get everybody together so i walk them through that entire process for the entire year and then afterwards then they kind of go to our general like a volunteer program manager and she helps them with any of their questions that's awesome yeah it's not just the clubs within this area so it's not like all the different schools are just one specific school that does all those activities so that's everybody so my office in the pittsburgh office is responsible from erie all the way down to washington county all the way over to penn state so that kind of block a western he is kind of what we are in charge of and they all converge on pittsburgh for the buddy walk for the friendship block for buddy ball things like that i know there's one in philadelphia  have got it and it's a big state pennsylvania so i know that's how people get involved in like the schools how you help them so what like do you have to help people out out of schools to get involved with this program yes so we do have a college colleges the universities who get involved as well so those are kind of are older buddies who can then get involved with the university as we call them sites so typically the college will reach out to a local group home or community center or something like that that's in the area that would be willing to transport them to the university so they can get involved and then we also have our citizens program which is very similar to our friendship program in the schools except it's just adults who are getting peered we keep them in the same you know area of the city we keep them age wise we keep them you know the same interests anything that we do for you know in the high school level  like college i read something on the web site the international web site not how you like help them integrate into college easier yes like i mean yeah it's through our friendship program so some like duquesne university here have a huge chapter they have like four hundred members i believe but they also have their st anthony's program which is what partners with duquesne insane anthony's does like integrated employment and stuff so they help them get those jobs skills but then they also have that social aspect because they partner with the best buddies chapter ok is the pittsburgh chapter basically just sectioned off so they focus on the colleges that's here or does it help with colleges elsewhere yes so are pittsburgh office is like i said just like the high schools from erie to washington county over to penn state with them and colleges are separate one you know so colleges are still underneath our chapter like our office like we do we help with all of that just the same thing we would do with a high school to get a club certain it is a little bit different because one club on a university campus they have the different rules on certain clubs and things and it's all a little bit just a little bit different of a process but it's still the same program everything like that same area so you said about your friendship program how do you think your friendship program and if benefits like the community like yeah so  when you go into this program you think oh i'm doing such a great thing i am helping this person with a disability you know i'm becoming their friend you know i'm giving back but really in the end i've heard it so many times that people are like i can't believe how much i learned i learned about myself i learned about this person in this entire community you know what the the rights and things that they have in the things that they can't do because of the restrictions that we as a society put on them  it's it's kind of a reversal of what you kind of think is going to happen when you go into this program what are some ways that communities can get involved other than the friendship program to get involved with the schools or anything like that yes so  have our citizens program which you know we always need buddies for so that's a great way to get involved so we need your buddies all the time so an individual without a disability to partner up with you know somebody who does so that's always a great way to get involved but then there's also our fundraising so we we are a nonprofit which means that we don't take any of the money just for for own gain it all go straight into our program somewhere so getting involved in those fundraising we have actually giving tuesday coming out the tuesday after thanksgiving so right now that's kind of our big focus right now is you know getting people to give back to that as well because all of that goes straight into straight into our programs  we send people to leadership conference students from schools we send them to leadership conference which is a big get together in indiana state university so the chapter president of every club we send for free like  you get involved with separately yet so that is completely up to the clubs every club does it differently we had clubs who would host during like cafeteria like during lunch time and the cafeteria they host a coffee cart so they just do a coffee car and they both paris kind of together on that so the person within the person without who are served in which is a great way we have people who do you know fund raising through like you know candy sales or pretzels or popcorn or you know really it's really fun i mean it depends on the club that's how they can get involved the friendship walk however as we do you ask about that yeah so that is something that the club itself puts together a team to come and walk and they raise their own funds for that event as well it's awesome how do you like pitch new ideas how to new ideas and new fundraisers or new ideas like activities going about within the club and within the community so within the club that is you know whoever's involved in the child are pretty yeah it's all relative so the chapter president you know gets a great idea they're on pinterest or something or they see something and they you know all this would be a great idea and then they just kind of run with it through the communities so local schools especially down in this area because we have quite a few in the south hills area they kind of get together some of the schools get together and they do you know events together they do their own kind of dances they do you know  like sporting events and things like that where they kind of get together i love it you know i think i might be all the time we have for today actually i know it was really all we want to say thank you to ms nicole meyer for sharing how we can get involved in this amazing program within our community and we'll be back with another guest after the welcome back to this episode of the edge we have a new guest here with us for this portion of the show so we're so happy to introduce miss laura she have thank you for having me here and i tel you can i ask you a little bit about your role with the best buddies club the school i'm actually a co sponsor of the best buddies program i am with mrs clancy and we try our best to keep everybody organized mostly student run club so we just make sure that everybody's on the same page and what the chair members have planned actually follow through with it so ok and it's been here for this is the third year club yes so how was it started back so there were three students in the middle school mary fitzgerald making the barbara and lee colonoscopy and they brought it from the middle school where was an unofficial chapter to the high school where they actually became an official chapter of the best buddies yes they do have to interview for the positions so every year we've tried to change things up a bit just to make sure we had everybody strengths and weaknesses and see what we can do better yet here and it's grown tremendously since the first year yeah so how do students get involved in the club so at the beginning of the year we advertise as much as possible to try to get awareness of the club ok it's really taken off because of the partners and p e programs that we have with my school we've gotten a lot of interest that way but at the beginning of the year they sign up on the best body website and they go through interview questions to get parental consent because some of the activities are outside the high school and we match up according to interests and if they've ever been matched before with somebody if they've requested to be matched with somebody we try to promote that way so throughout the year we have one on one pairing and when we run out of people to pair with with the intellectual disability and without disabilities then we start doing associate can you tell me a little bit more about the partners in p t that you mentioned so partner simpy is an alternative gym class ok so it's low impact on contact gym class that supports people with intellectual disabilities or physical disabilities that need more support in learning how to do the activities so it wouldn't be a full contact football it would even be flag football but it would be learning how to pass the ball and going from one part of the field to the other  and they have partners throughout the every two weeks they switch it up so it also teaches socialization skills and getting people just that social interactions tremendous so that's a course of the  had to split the applicants for the nonce able to come in through the high school used to be a year round program for everybody and now we've split it to just a semester long for people with disabilities i try to bring in the chairs at least monthly so everybody's to create different activities for the students we try to do one activity inside the high school after school and then one activity outside the high school after school each month sometimes it's more sometimes less depending on how well we can get organized and we also talked to the chair people about fund raising and promotion and just involving everybody as much as possible ok how do you guys pick the activities that you do do this create that or the chairs actually bring it to the sponsors me and my mrs clancy myself ok to get our approval and furthur activities like sponsoring a charity event there are extra steps that we have to do to make sure that it's approved with the school board to make sure that we're not  of friends giving we decide to friends giving in our teams class and a lot of the students that participate in teams invited their best buddies and to the friends giving which is basically the two of class created a thanksgiving dinner and they prepared it they made the menus they set out the tables they did invitations they had they cooked it's wonderful meal everybody sat down they ain't with their friends and it was very nice what is this team's class  teams is the peter sonship high school's name for a life skills class ok it stands for transition employment adult living management skills  russia so how do you think all the activities that you do are beneficial for everyone in the club we just went to see a movie together and this came about because we had one member of best body saying that she's never been to the movies with a friend before and when we found this out then really while let's get everybody to go together and give her the opportunity to not just have to go with family in order to see a movie but to actually interact with friends and go out so you know we had twenty seven people at the movie well what other kind of activities do you guys do throughout the year at the year it varies we do try to get involved with what best body internationals doing so the best body walk ok and then there's the best body ball but we went to tracks farms for a hayride and corn maze and we're trying to go back this year to jim sport with the trampoline park so anything that the kids show interest and we try to get done what kind of impact have you seen with the students this abilities with being involved in this club so i've been in the high school for four years ok and the first year is here the best bike club did not exist and during class changes the students would go out and watch the everybody switch around because the students that i am with don't train to classes as often because they come right back to me so they go out they get a break but when they were standing there people would walk did what happened at the tree of life mrs clancy actually pulled us together and it's beautiful one of the victims was actually best buddies number an adult member and the team's class does a weekly coffee cart for the high school yeah i think high school was here on the top unfortunately not for the students yet what we did it was the pro from that week were actually donated to best buddies international in the name of the victim and they actually had a competition for the home room that could raise the amount of the most amount of money and there were two home rooms that tied for believe they raised over one hundred dollars each so and it was close with it was over a thousand dollars that they raised for such a good cause yeah yeah what other  things do you guys raise money for is it like for your club or is it for there are international there are yearly fees for best buy international to be considered a yeah chapter and that's actually goes towards the leadership conference that they send the president to every year so about pays for that and then there's just incidentals of what can we raise so that we can have activities for the kids so if there is trick or treating around the high school we have to go out and buy the candy and walk around so  incidentals like that ok so i know we touched on like the people at this buddy's in it but how do you think it impacts like the others involved in it the students without the disappearance i've heard a lot of people come up and say i stereotype and they go past it is when you actually get to sit down and know a person that you really start to understand that it's not a disability it's a national human being and you know how do you guys work with the pittsburgh chapter i know that they're kind of like they work with the different schools that they work with different schools they go around offering support ok if we have a question they can help us out they keep us updated on what they're doing so that if we want to participate we can offer it to our club as well that's great y know are there any like upcoming things that you're doing and it was we just got over the movie i believe they want to do their own form of do you guys have like monthly meetings weekly meetings throughout the year so we try to have a monthly meeting at least once either inside or outside of school with all the members with all the members ok and but the one on one pairings those particular pairings need to me at least once either in the group setting or outside of the group setting ok and the students without disabilities need to do a best buddy update so they submit online the activities they did just to say that they today we would like to thank miss you haven't ms nicole meyer for joining us to speak about the wonderful organization that is best buddies best buddies is not only a club within our school but also a unifying factor that brings people together in our community and others with a resource like best buddies that promotes this unity amongst us all we as the school and as a society as a whole need to utilize it it is important to get involved in programs like best buddies to better the way we interact and the way we live here at p h s we work hard to create an environment that welcomes all and makes everybody feel equal best buddies is just one of the amazing ways we do this by helping students with disabilities feel more involved and welcome in school than ever every student including those with disabilities struggle with the daily pressures of fitting in and getting involved in the school it's time to get involved if you teach us and a program like best buddies club in order to ease those struggles and the most unifying way as possible