Personal Motivation to Become an Exchange Student: Opinion Essay

From February 2017 to June 2017 I stayed in Vancouver, Canada, as an exchange student. During my stay, I had the opportunity to explore an outlandish culture, get to know countless people, and try out new and unfamiliar activities. My openness to experience led me to my participation in a program called Best Buddies International, in which I participated from March 2017 to June 2017. Looking back today, my participation in the program can be described as one of the most memorable experiences during my stay in Vancouver.

Best Buddies International is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization which is devoted to ending the social, physical, and economic isolation of the 200 million people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Their mission is to establish a global volunteer movement that creates opportunities for one-to-one friendships, integrated employment, and leadership development, which are the three key mission pillars of the organization.

Best Buddies was founded in the United States by Anthony Kennedy Shriver. He is the nephew of John F. Kennedy, the late 35th President of the United States.

The Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which was the first civil rights legislation in the United States that prohibits discrimination on grounds of disability, and the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, which required all public schools accepting federal funds to provide equal access to education and one free meal a day for children with physical and mental disabilities, paved the way for Best Buddies. 14 years after these acts Anthony Kennedy Shriver founded the original Best Buddies Chapter at Georgetown University and thereby took the first step towards creating Best Buddies International, which today extends across 48 countries on 6 continents.

Unlike most other organizations, Best Buddies is an organization with a goal of putting itself out of business.

Today Best Buddies International counts 2.498 chapters and 120.182 total participants which have impacted and enhanced the lives of 1.201.820 individuals worldwide by creating opportunities for meaningful friendships, securing successful jobs, living independently, improve public speaking, self-advocacy and communication skills, and eventually feeling valued by society.

Best Buddies Friendship programs represent one of the organization’s three key mission pillars. This program in which I participated, was introduced at my school, Carson Graham Secondary, with the goal to break through social barriers and to integrate students with IDD.

The school program was established in 1995 and operates as a student-run friendship club. The club focuses on building one-to-one friendships between people with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities. It offers social mentoring while improving the quality of life and level of inclusion for a population that is often isolated and excluded. Through their participation, students with IDD form meaningful connections with their peers at school, gain self-confidence and self-esteem, and share interests, experiences, and activities that many other teenagers enjoy.

Carson Graham Secondary is not the only school offering this program in order to create an inclusive school climate for students and a community culture of acceptance.

In total 63.355 high-schoolers worldwide participate in one of the 1.197 different school friendship chapters.

I came to know the Best Buddies program shortly after I arrived in Vancouver due to my classmates at school, who also participated in the program and recommended it to me. Knowing that it would help me integrate myself at school, getting to know new people, and trying out something new and unfamiliar, that does not exist at my school in Germany. I, therefore, decided to join. Participation in the program also presented itself to be a fitting project for the CertiLingua program.

2. Personal Motivation

When I first found about the project during a lunch break, I was immediately motivated to sign up. I asked a friend if she has ever participated in a program or a project at school and whether she could recommend me one. Considering that she is really active and stands up for her friends, classmates, and school, it was no surprise to me that she had participated in almost every program/project at one point. While listening to her description of the different programs, one stood out to me: Best Buddies. In contrast to the other programs, it seemed to offer many opportunities, such as integrating myself at school, because being an exchange student in an unfamiliar country holds many obstacles. The biggest obstacle for me was to integrate myself and connect with my peers. Canadians are very friendly and considered and yet it is fairly difficult to build strong friendships since I frequently had the impression of them being shallow. Seeing that Best Buddies focuses on building these strong one-to-one Friendships, it appeared to be the perfect opportunity for me. I expected from it to help me not only to get to know new people but moreover build friendships with my peers who also participated in the program. Whether they were disabled or not did not matter to me.

Beforehand I had little experience in dealing with disabled individuals, in particular with disabled peers, since a comparable project does not exist at my school in German (Friedrich Ebert Gymnasium).

Before joining Best Buddies, I definitely expected that it would be a lot of work and would consume a lot of time. We not only have to spend time with the disabled peers but also have to plan group activities, events, and field trips. I was worried that it might be too much and that getting to know others, outside of the program, would suffer from it. Furthermore, I worried if it was the right program to join, since the school offered various programs in different fields. At first, I was uncertain if I would have been more contented by choosing alternative program.

Most importantly I wanted to leave my comfort zone and therefore tried many activities that I would have never tried back at home in Germany. Before joining Best Buddies, I had many prejudices. I could not have imagined sincerely being friends with someone who thinks differently and does not have the same intellectual capacity. I was worried that I would not be able to build a real bond with these people since I did not really see them as a “peers” or “just another kid”, I used to focus on their disability rather than them being an individual person who does not get defined by his disability.

3. Connection to the school curriculum

The Best Buddies project cannot be connected to only one school subject or topic but rather extends over the entire school life. The same values can be found in the interaction with others, interpersonal relationships, and the tolerance and open minds of the students.

Furthermore, Best Buddies also fits to the school profile due to its focus on equality of its students, regardless of race, ethnicity, the color of skin or disability. Diversity and individuality are being encouraged by offering various art, music, and literature classes in which the students can flourish, unfold their creativity and create their individual identity.

The variety of languages that can be studied at the FEG help to promote diversity and the equality of all ethnicities, since the students also get to know unfamiliar cultures and lifestyles.

Additionally, the refugee class is a project with a similar concept as best buddies. Although it does not particularly focus on integrating disabled students. In this project, German students and teachers work together with refugees and foreign children who came to Germany. The project aims at inclusion, education, and equality, by teaching them the German language, explaining cultural differences, and helping them to connect with peers.

The FEG does not offer education for intellectual disabled students as Carson Graham Secondary does, however people with physical disabilities also get the opportunity to attend classes since the school has an elevator that grants accessibility for physical disabled students and teachers.

Furthermore, getting to know people and building friendships is not only difficult for teenagers with disabilities but also for many others. The FEG, therefore, offers various clubs such as the rowing club, tea club, which create opportunities for making meaningful friendships and sharing common interests, experiences and activities.

4. Course

Usually students could only join the program at the beginning of each school year and had to participate for at least the entire following year. This rule was set up in order not to harm your potential buddy by breaking your promise (of friendship) once hope has been provided. It, therefore, was important to maintain involvement.

But since I was an exchange student and were not able to join at the beginning of the school year, they made an exception. By reason of this, I could not be a regular Peer Buddy who builds a one-to-one friendship with a disabled peer, but rather had the mixed duty of a “Peer buddy combined with “associate member”. This meant that I could and should hang out with one particular disabled peer but was not as bound to that person as the other Peer buddies were. Moreover, as an associate member, I had to attend group activities and lunches and additionally had to assist planning activities, events, and fundraisings.

Since I participated in the program for several months I cannot unfold every single activity and will therefore solely give a general overview and explain certain activities further in detail.

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Our regular meetings took place twice a week during lunch break. During these lunch breaks, we did various activities. The usual lunch break consisted of eating, talking, and playing games. Our favorite games were Uno and Jenga, especially the younger students loved these games. Uno is a well-known game and there is, therefore, no need to explain it further. Jenga is a game of physical and mental skill. Built on the simple premise of stacking blocks. Players take turns to remove a block from a tower and balance it on top, creating a taller and increasingly unstable structure as the game progresses. But there was a problem, which I will explain at the example of Jenga. For playing Jenga, as I mentioned above, physical and mental skills are needed, in which some of the disabled students lacked in. After losing the game they sometimes got furious and started to become aggressive towards the other students and teachers, making it arduous to interact with them and calm them down.

In the following paragraph, I am going to describe one of the lunch breaks in detail.

The lunch break starts at 12:55 am, is 40 min long and therefore ends at 13:35pm. First, we met in the special education classroom and all started to eat lunch together. Shortly after, I decide to walk around the school wit another girl, called Hana, with whom I had started to build a friendship. She had a speech impediment and therefore had difficulties with pronunciation, grammar, and communication in general, but it did not hinder us at building a friendship. Hana particularly enjoyed going to the school’s gym and do various activities there. We consequently went to the smallest gym of the school, since the ground was padded and it was designed for doing gymnastics. After running around for a while, just when we started to become exhausted, the bell rang and signaled us that the break had come to an end. That being the case, I accompanied her back to the classroom.

Furthermore, we regularly held the Best Buddies information session, where upcoming events were discussed and organized, and new people could go to if they want to join the program. For instance, we planned a monthly hotdog sale in the Eagles Café for the winter and a regular event called Freezer Friday for the summer months, where we sold popsicles in the Agora. The earnings of those sales were invested in field trips or events like the Pizza Event where we ordered Pizza for lunch.

Moreover, major events such as a Best Buddies Dance, rallies, and an outdoor art project were debated and arrange during the information sessions.

The Best Buddies Dance was the highlight of the semester and needed much preparation. Thus, a lot of effort was put into planning the event.

The dance took place towards the end of my stay in Canada, on the 21st of June. The members of Best Buddies from Carson Graham Secondary as well as from another would come together and participate in the dance. Since the dance would take place in the gym of our school, we were responsible for the planning.

Organizing a dance or any other event is a lot of work. It is therefore important to get enough people on board so that the work could be evenly divided. Hence, we formed various teams, and each got designated with a certain task from a basic to-do list (action plan), which we created prior.

Our action plan looked as followed:

The day before the dance, the team I was part of would be excused from classes and set everything up. A photo booth was also set up. The needed equipment was available to us, as some students had already made them for a previous event. Two girls from my team had technology skills and therefore were assigned to check the music equipment (set up a drum kit) and the sound system (microphones).

Furthermore, all of use were responsible for making decorations. A week before the dance, when we came together during lunch, we made decorations for the walls and tables out of paper, turning out to be really beautiful.

Moreover, we created a slide show consisting of all the photos we had taken during our participation in the program.

Lastly, to finalize our preparations, we decided that everyone would bring some snacks or food to the dance and would additionally order Pizza for everyone.

The dance took place from 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm the following day and was a success. Students from different school, participating in the program, danced, laughed and overall spent an enjoyable time together.

As a member of this program, I did not only plan events at school or hung out with my peers during lunch, but also met up with them after school. We often went out for coffee, dinner, or the movies as a group. Beyond that I used to hang out with a particular girl. Her name is Hana and she has a speech impediment, as I have mentioned before.

Meeting her for the first time outside of school was more onerous as it usually is. Before I was allowed to meet her, her mother wanted to get to know me and therefore invited me to their place. She enlightened me further of her daughter’s disability and special needs and gave me her phone number, in case of an emergency. Afterwards, we were allowed to hang out with the condition that I always had to inform her of our location. We went out to get coffee, went shopping, and hung out at her place, always having a pleasant time.

5. Personal experience during Best Buddies

I was very nervous the first time I went to one of the regularly held Best Buddies information sessions, where upcoming events were discussed and organized, and new people could go to if they want to join the program. Fortunately, after a short while I lost my nervousness due to their kindness and making me feel welcome. It really surprised me how open everyone was. Prompt I realized the magnificence of the program and noticed how small actions can have a meaningful impact on another person’s life. Seeing how it gives them the strength to break through social barriers and to become involved in the community is really empowering and evoked my passion to build these friendships.

6. Reflection

Inclusion, education, and equality is the mission of the Best Buddies program in High Schools. Being a member of this program and to support this mission is an extremely marvelous experience. It allowed me to be a part of something that I had not been able to experience before.

Our motto was “put person first”. Best Buddies teaches you to put the true personality first and not get preoccupied or define a person by the disability. Taking this motto to heart contributes to encouraging and appreciating equality as well as being non-judgemental towards other people.

Moreover, the created friendships within this program helped me to understand the hardships these students go through every day, causing me to realize that all my troubles are minuet compared to their struggles. This realization revealed to me the true value of each day and simple activities we take for granted.

I was perennially amazed how they always preserve a positive outlook on life and know to cherish the for most people insignificant things in life. Their attitude influenced me to have a more positive attitude towards life myself and be thankful for every new day.

At the end of this project, I understood that conquering the world is possible for anyone. As long as one is willing to commit, work hard, and has a positive attitude, success is ineluctable. Everyone should be treated as equal, no matter the disability or difference. Moreover, diversity and individuality are qualities to be proud of, but in order to achieve equality, discrimination must be eliminated.

I am very thankful that I had the opportunity to be part of this project since it offered me to gain experiences, make friends, have a better understanding of people as well as to commit to a great cause. I learned how important it is to stand up for other people and help them if they are being discriminated or have a more difficult time than oneself. Standing up for someone else can be frightening, and many people are hesitant to step in or only care about themselves, but it is important to look after others and to know that one voice or a small act of kindness can make a difference.

Overall Best Buddies was an amazing experience that I would recommend to anyone, since it brings people of all abilities, interests, and talents together, as equals and as friends.

7. Outlook

Before Best Buddies, I had little knowledge about disabilities like IDD and the hardships these people go through daily. I could have never imagined building friendships with these students. The experience broke off my prejudices and taught me to worship the true personality of a person. The project really did change my mind, as I really enjoyed getting to know the most diverse people, spending time, planning events, and overall having fun with them. I really pity that I had to leave Carson Graham Secondary and all my friends behind. I wistful look back on my stay in Vancouver and wish that the FEG would also offer a similar program with the mission of inclusion, education, and equality.