E-Buddies

 Hi everyone! 

I wanted to take today to briefly talk to you all about an amazing Best Buddies program that deserves a lot of hype: E-buddies! This program is designed for individuals (age 10 and older) with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities from around the country who are interested in learning more about someone from outside of their local community. If you sign up, you will be matched with an email pen pal and celebrate friendship while doing so. 

How E-buddies works, is that after taking a survey, you will be matched with an online buddy. You will be matched based off of interests, age, and gender preference. E-buddies is free for individuals with IDD.

E-buddies is not only a great way to build a connection with someone, but it also allows for a lot of literacy and communication skills to increase. As we have all seen in the past year, technology continues to advance and being able to adapt to technological changes is important in our society. Furthermore,  E-buddies may help improve your reading and writing skills in a fun way, outside of a traditional classroom (or zoom call!). 

Another strength of E-buddies is a study showed that 54% of individuals with IDD feel more confident on social media outlets than when engaging with individuals in person. Therefore, this program allows for individuals to be most comfortable in a time of forming new friendships. Alongside that, by being email pen pals, you can mutually choose your expectations within time flexibility, i.e., expectations for how many emails per week, how long each email is, and much more. Your emails can be brief, or they can be lengthy, however you choose to develop a friendship is up to you! 

Also, E-buddies is safe. It is full of protective measures to assure your information that you share is kept private. All e-buddies go through a prescreening before participation, and E-buddies assures a privacy policy. 

Of course, there are countless methods to make friends; however, we wanted to share one favorite with you today: E-buddies! We hope this may have sparked an interested in you and you do some more research about E-buddies. 

In friendship, 

Sophie