May 18, 2000 | Read Time: 2 minutes
By NICOLE WALLACE
Best Buddies is bringing its friendship-matching program online to help mentally retarded people learn to use computers.
Since February, the organization’s e-Buddies program has matched 100 retarded people with non-disabled volunteers, who agree to write to their buddies at least once a week for a year.
In addition to encouraging participants to develop computer skills, Best Buddies designed the program to appeal to adult volunteers who may not have enough time to participate in the organization’s in-person friendship programs.
The approach seems to be working. Unlike the Best Buddies’ in-person friendship programs — which always have more people on the waiting list for a friend than volunteers with whom to match them — the number of non-disabled volunteers for the e-Buddies program has so far outnumbered the number of people with mental retardation who have signed up.
“What has been slower — and what our real challenge is — is reaching out to the community of people with mental retardation,” observes Lisa Derx, the director of e-Buddies.
She believes that the slower sign-up rate among people with mental retardation is because many do not have access to computers or have not been taught to use e-mail.
Best Buddies is working to spread the word about the program to other social-service charities that work with the mentally disabled, including Special Olympics.
To ensure the safety of all participants in the program, e-Buddies checks references on everyone who signs up and conducts a background check on volunteers.
Ms. Derx says that sometimes people ask her what difference sending some e-mail messages can have on someone’s life.
“What it does is it tells a person with mental retardation that someone cares about them. Someone’s interested in them. Someone wants to hear how their day went, and they don’t always get that,” she answers.
“So to form a friendship — even over e-mail — is incredibly moving and powerful.”
To get there: Go to http://www.ebuddies.org.
