Sammie Vance, 14, knows there’s nothing worse than feeling left out. For years, she’s been helping kids who feel lonely make friends. What she was doing was running the Buddy Bench program. The idea was that anyone at school who was feeling lonely could sit on the “buddy bench”. That let other kids know someone needed a friend. “It’s really helpful to have other people be able to notice you,” Sammie says.
Sammie got the idea for the Buddy Bench program at summer camp in 2017. She thought it would be cool to have a buddy bench in her school, so when she got home, she presented the idea to her principal (校长), her teachers, and her parents. Getting approval for the project was just the first step. “There have been a lot of small challenges, like money,” Sammie says.
To reduce costs and be eco-friendly, Sammie decided to make the bench out of recycled material. So she asked her community to gather bottle caps. Word of the project got out, and soon Sammie was getting caps from people all around the country. She even got them from people in Germany, the Netherlands, and other countries. In the end, she collected more than 1,200 pounds of bottle caps. A company called GreenTree Plastics was able to make these into three benches.
Before long, Sammie was helping other schools acquire benches. She has donated more than 200 benches to schools and parks all around her country, and in Mexico and Australia. Her work continues to spread kindness far and wide. “We recently got a bench in Ghana, Africa,” she says. “That was cool.”
Sammie says the effort has helped her overcome personal challenges. “I used to be really, really shy,” she says. “I’m definitely more outgoing now.” She has also learned to acknowledge her limits, and to take breaks when working on a big project. “It just helped me grow in so many different aspects of my life,” she says.
更多优质学习内容
