The second of Linda and Daniel Bader’s three children, Alexander, 5, has Down syndrome. Cliff Meldman has an adopted special needs child, Noah, 23, who has a combination of epilepsy, autism and Asperger’s syndrome.
Both of them are participants in a new Lubavitch of Wisconsin program, the Friendship Circle, which began this past summer.
Once a week, a teen or college student volunteer comes to the home of these people and interacts with them as a friend, sometimes playing games, sometimes helping with social skills or intellectual skills, with all activities tailored to the client’s individual needs.
For example, because Alexander loves music and has his own guitar, the volunteer brings along her guitar and they make music together. For Noah’s part, “one of his favorite sports is eating,” said Cliff Meldman; so the volunteers will sometimes make a kosher meal for him.
Both families praise the results. “We love it,” said Linda Bader. “Alexander has the opportunity to meet someone with a different relationship and who gives him a lot of special attention.” This is not only “a great learning experience for him,” but it also “frees me to focus time on the other two kids.”
And Cliff Meldman reports that Noah “looks forward” to the volunteers’ visits and is “smiling, happy and laughing” when he is with them. “It’s quite exciting.”
But the clients aren’t the only beneficiaries. Rachel Goldberg, a freshman at Nicolet High School, heard about the program through a friend and decided she also wanted to volunteer.
So for “a couple of months,” she has been meeting once a week with an autistic boy, playing board games or basketball.
“I try to be a friend to him,” Goldberg said. But she also found that, “It makes me feel good when he is having fun and is happy.”
Jill Schutkin, a sophomore studying business and Jewish studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, works with a family that has three special needs people, one teen and two young adults.
“I come to the home every Sunday,” she said, and “they jump for joy when I ring the doorbell; they always come up and give me a hug.”
“Every time I go,” Schutkin continued, “I know how much of a mitzvah this is.”
Family project
The Friendship Circle is something of a family project for Rabbi Shmaya Shmotkin, rabbi of The Shul and director of Lubavitch of Wisconsin’s Jewish Youth Foundation, which runs the Friendship Circle.
He told The Chronicle that the idea originated about five years ago with his sister-in-law and her husband, Bassie and Rabbi Levi Shemtov, who work for Lubavitch in Detroit.
“They realized this was something that was missing from developmentally disabled children’s lives,” Shmotkin said. “Even children whose parents could afford the necessary aid and therapists and professional care were desperately missing the component only a friend can give: love and sharing and friendship.”
Shmotkin knew there was similar need in Milwaukee. “We figured this would be a perfect fit to compliment many programs we have here,” he said.
That the volunteers would be teens and college students is “an equally important part of the program,” said Shmotkin. “It allows [the volunteers] to do something that is selfless and giving and develops within them the type of giving a person really aspires to. You wonder who gains more, the kids or the teens.”
Coordinating the program are two young women from New York who recently completed Lubavitch seminary educations: Malka Dubroff and Chanie Grossbaum.
They help to find the families and volunteers for the program, striving through interviews and questionnaires to make the best matches. Grossbaum also said they will go with the volunteers the first few times to make sure everybody is comfortable with each other.
“I am more than glad to do this,” said Grossbaum. “It is a warm feeling to know that you’re doing something so special for these families.”
Shmotkin said the Friendship Circle at present has about 10 families “from all different segments of the community,” served by 14 volunteers. So far, he has been relying on word-of-mouth to obtain clients and volunteers “because of the delicate nature of the program; we wanted it to be built on its merits not by broad marketing; we wanted to make sure of its quality.”
Now that “we’ve done that and mastered it, we’re going to take a more active role in marketing it to volunteers as well as to families,” he said. He said the program has set a goal of serving “up to 30 families” during the course of this school year.
For more information about the Friendship Circle, call 414-228-8000.
