Скачать или смотреть Best Buddies Program Working To Support More Las Cruces Students With Disabilities

An estimated eight million people in the US live with intellectual and developmental disabilities… A project that helps kids faced with disabilities build social connections in high school.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Best Buddies” is a project designed to address the social, physical and economic isolation often faced by the eight million Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities…like autism, downs syndrome and traumatic brain injuries.

The program pairs high school students living with these challenges with student volunteers- with the goal of developing peer support at school and meaningful, one on one friendships.

“We go and have lunch with them we go to basketball games together – we have parties and celebrations – and get them on that one to one friendsship with each other – and so that is the main idea of best buddies is jut too- have that one on one friendship “

Las Cruces High School senior and best buddy volunteer Quetzal Soto says the development of these social ties often allow students with intellectual disabilities to become more socially involved.

Without that, the high school experience can be extremely challenging.

“They have a harder time – trying to have– friendships” “There is an individual and he is very easily persuaded into what other peers – into what other peers tell him to do- so I see that as peer pressure – but in the wrong way—so students think that if they can tell him – hey go say this to these girls sitting at the table or go do this and this – he listens to them because he doesn’t understand they aren’t trying to be his friends – they are trying to make fun of him and they are trying to bully him and get him in trouble- and that has happened quite a few times at school and he has gotten into trouble- so what we do us being there we— just want to be a good example and that is the whole point of this program also – it goes to show that we are trying to be leaders and trying to be friends in a good way”

In New Mexico, downs syndrome affects one out of every one thousand people. Two of every 10,000 children suffer from autism. While intellectual disabilities can make high school a struggle- Soto says the bigger challenge is preparing these students for life after school- A 2014 Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation survey found only one in three people with intellectual disabilities is employed.

“Whenever they are more involved with peers and having that social contact they are able to reach out and want to go to the community and look for jobs- and it also helps because they are not – a lot of individuals with disabilities – they cannot live on their own- being able to be able to establish – just give them skills- to live ont their own- five them skile – to do taxes be able to pay for rent or be able to understand how credit card accounts works- a bank account works- or how just too get them exposed to what they are always – kept away from – it is helping them in many ways to be able to live on their own- or be able to talk to a manager at – a fast food restaurant that they would want to work out - just to be able too get that income and be able to provide for themselves – and uhmmmmmm it also helps just for the fact they don’t feel that they are alone”

While the best buddies program is widespread throughout Albuquerque schools, Las Cruces High School is the only school in the Las Cruces Public School District that hosts the program… As part of a health advocacy peer education project- Soto is trying to change that…

“Before the program – the students with disabilities stand there in the hallway as students go about their day- Nobody go’s to say to them- nobody stops to even talk to them, no body stops by their room- to give them cookies to do anything like the programs have done now.”

There are five people in Soto’s family with varying degrees of autism…. With plans to go into a career in health care she says changing how society treats and sees people with intellectual disabilities has personal importance.

“I have always had- the heart to be with them and I have always had the passion – to want to help and just enjoy being around them because I think that they are amazing – in all their different ways – because a lot people think that they – I feel like a lot of people put them lower – as us- because they have a disability and I don’t think that is right- and I think that we should all be viewed as equals and that we should view them- as equals instead of us - isolating them and putting them away – and we should engage with them.”