Courtesy of Toga Best Buddies Club
Officers Renn Blanco, Tarun Ramakrishnan, Rithik Atreya and Nathan Liu pose at club rush on Sept. 7.
Go to a monthly meeting of the Best Buddies club and you’ll see dozens of positive interactions with students in the Community Based Interactions (CBI) program.
Just one example involves sophomore Devon Duong, a student in CBI who is passionate about movies and loves to discuss them with his Best Buddies friends. In fact, all the officers are subscribed to his YouTube channel where he posts movie reviews. Additionally, some officers got to share the stage with him for “The Little Mermaid” spring musical, bonding through their mutual love of acting and singing.
The club holds monthly meetings on Blue Day Wednesdays. Dozens of members of the Best Buddies club gather in the quad to converse and play games like charades and 20 questions with special needs students in the CBI program.
Best Buddies is an international organization with the goal of ending the social, mental and physical isolation of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The school’s Best Buddies chapter was revived last year by Class of ‘24 alumni Nishant Nair, Dhruv Nemani and Dhilon Prasad.
The club’s mission is to break the boundaries that exist around students with disabilities by encouraging mainstream students to interact with peers in the CBI program. Activities revolve around making an effort to be involved in the lives of students with IDD, providing them with company.
Senior Tarun Ramakrishnan, the club’s vice president, said, “I think people should get involved because people often have preconceived notions about CBI students or the special needs, and [students think they] can’t communicate with them or relate to them on the same level as their friends.”
The club allows for interactions through events they host — for example, during Chinese New Year, multiple schools’ Best Buddies Clubs gathered in the SHS large gym for a dance. The event was intended to give students a dance experience as students in the CBI program are not always able to attend formals and other school dances.
“It’s a great feeling knowing that I can help people my age or younger and that I am inspiring other peers to join me on this mission,” senior club president Renn Blanco said.
The club collaborated with Sources of Strength to host a Special Olympics event at Fremont High on May 2.
“Through time, [CBI students] start to warm up to you and you feel a lot warmer,” Ramakrishnan added. “You learn that they too have their own special talents; meeting with them and taking the time to know them can genuinely have a big impact on both you and them.”
