Best Buddies New Mexico

When people with disabilities are unable to attain or maintain a job, it is most often due to an absence of social skills, rather than an inadequacy to perform the work required. Best Buddies introduces socialization and leadership opportunities providing the necessary tools for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to become more independent and more included in the community.Best Buddies Middle and High Schools matches students with intellectual disabilities with other middle and high school students and creates one-to-one friendships between them. In today's middle and high schools, students with intellectual disabilities often enter the same building and walk the same hallways as their peers, but are frequently left out of social activities.Best Buddies Colleges matches people with intellectual disabilities with college students and creates one-to-one friendships between them.e-Buddies creates e-mail friendships between people with and without intellectual disabilities. Using the technology of e-mail, e-Buddies brings additional, unconventional opportunities to people with intellectual disabilities. Best Buddies Promoters empowers youth to become advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities by organizing and attending special events that promote advocacy and bring awareness to the disability rights movement. Best Buddies Citizens fosters one-to-one friendships between adults with and without IDD in corporate and civic communities. This program helps people with IDD become part of mainstream society and creates an inclusive and diverse community for all.Best Buddies Ambassadors is the next step for the disability rights movement--teaching people with IDD the skills they need to successfully self-advocate. Best Buddies Jobs is a supported employment program that secures competitive paying jobs for people with IDD, therefore enabling them to work as respected individuals.