Student organizes Best Buddies

It’s a club that revolves around friendship.
Best Buddies, which has a new chapter at Jay County High School, is an organization focused on creating opportunities for one-to-one friendships for those with intellectual or developmental disabilities.
“All it is is a friendship,” said Anne Vormohr, a junior and the Jay County chapter’s founder.
Vormohr has been working to start the organization since last school year when she found out about it through her mother.
She wanted to find ways to include students with disabilities in every day life at Jay County.
That’s an endeavor important to Vormohr because her younger brother Luke, 11, has Down Syndrome.
“I’ve always been around somebody with a disability, and he’s obviously impacted our life greatly,” Vormohr said.
She hopes by starting a Best Buddies chapter, students with disabilities, like her brother, won’t feel secluded.
“That’s always been the concern with Luke, it’s not that he has Down Syndrome, it’s not that he’s going to be slower in the classroom,” she said. “It’s that he’ll be picked on by other kids or bullied because he has Down Syndrome or because he looks a little different.”
Vormohr first learned of the organization last year when her mother showed her a newspaper story about a Best Buddies prom at the former Southside High School in Muncie.
She had already been interested in finding ways to include special education students in school activities, like suggesting to the student council it find a way to get those students to attend basketball or football games, but she wanted to do more.
“She said, ‘Anne, you have to start this,’” Vormohr said of her mother.
Andrea Hodson, the life skills teacher at JCHS, jumped on board to help Vormohr get the organization started.
Paperwork needed to be filled out, and before a group could be started the international organization had to give the OK for a chapter at JCHS.
It took Vormohr most of the summer, during which she attended the Best Buddies Leadership Conference, to get the details worked out.
Hodson was at the conference too, because starting an organization that’s main goal is to integrate students with disabilities into the school is a mission close to her heart.
As the life skills teacher, she’s spent 18 years working with students with disabilities. She’s been looking for ways to get students in her life skills class involved with their peers in a positive way.
“This organization, that’s what it’s all about,” Hodson said. “It helps show that they are people who want friends like everyone else.
“And they have a lot to offer.”
When she met with administrators at JCHS to discuss the possibility of the club launching at the high school, they immediately approved the organization, Vormohr said.
“All the teachers right then and there said, ‘Yes, we’re giving approval now. We can do this and we can start this,’” she said.
She’s received support from outside the high school as well.
As part of its campaign to spread happiness, Coca Cola Enterprises, Portland, donated money to help Vormohr get the project started. And a local sorority sponsored her trip to Bloomington to participate in the Best Buddies leadership conference.
The organization is considered a co-curricular activity, meaning it can meet during activity period or outside of school.
Though she hasn’t held any formal meetings yet, Vormohr said students have expressed interest in joining, with at least 15 buddies signing up.
She’s excited for the group to start meeting and planning activities.
“I think I’m most excited for seeing who I’m going to be paired with. I’m just excited to see how much fun it’s going to be,” she said.
And she hopes the group impacts both buddies’ and peer buddies’ lives.
“I’m excited to see how much fun both sides have. I don’t think it’s going to be just the buddies that benefit from it,” she said. “I think the peer buddies will see a big change too and how much fun they can have.”
Hodson said she hopes the group helps students and the community gain an understanding in order to help prevent bullying and end the stigmas often associated with those who suffer from a disability.
“I think it can be nothing but a positive experience,” she said. “I’m hoping it trickles down and trickles out into an educational experience for everyone involved.”