19th Feb 2024
Walking through a schoolyard during a visit to a school for a talk I was presenting, I noticed a bench painted bright red.
I asked a student, “Why is this bench painted a different color?”
He said, “That’s the buddy bench. When someone feels lonely or they have nobody to play with, they sit there and kids ask them to play.”
What a wonderful idea, I thought, I then told him how wonderful that was and asked him if he ever used it.
He said, “Yeah. When I had just joined school, I sat there and someone came and asked me to play. I felt happy. And now, when I see kids on it, I ask them to play with me. We all do.”
On doing some further research, I found that the
the idea for buddy benches came from Christian Bucks, a second grader, in 2013.
The purpose of buddy benches is to help students deal with loneliness and bullying. Students can sit on the bench to indicate that they are feeling isolated or lonely and need someone to reach out to them. Other students are encouraged to invite those they see sitting on the bench to play with them.
Buddy Benches can benefit everyone, not just the children who are feeling isolated. It is a great way to teach empathy by showing how to recognize when someone else is in need and how we can be kind to them.
This can also teach us to be more proactive—to recognize the feelings of others and to step forward to do something about it.
I just Wish we had a Buddy Bench every here and there and whenever we feel lonely someone will reach out to us or if we see someone sitting there, we can reach out to them.
Let’s reach out to those who are feeling lonely, let’s create a ‘Buddy Bench’ in every park & stay blessed forever.
have a great weekend & stay blessed forever.