You’ve Got a Friend Project Pairs Teens with Special Needs Youngsters

Germantown, MD — The first couple of times 17-year-old Olessia Rubin visited 6-year-old Moishe this spring, she said the developmentally delayed boy was kind of shy and a little hesitant to hang out with her.

But by the time she went to visit Moishe last week, that had all changed.


Rubin said she walked into a roomful of people and Moishe immediately “recognized me and gave me a hug.”

“It made me feel like I’m doing something useful for him,” said the Gaithersburg teen. Not only that, she enjoys herself, too.

“It doesn’t feel like a job; it feels like I’m coming over to hang out with a friend,” she said.

Rubin is a volunteer in Friendship Circle, a Chabad program pairing up Jewish teenagers with a new “friend,” a Jewish child with special needs. The project first began outside Detroit in 1994 and has since spread to more than 60 communities nationwide. Chabad of Germantown’s Rabbi Mendel Kaplan and his wife, Chana, brought it to the Washington area this past school year.

This coming school year, the Friendship Circle will be merging with and absorbing Chaverim Connection, a similar program initiated by the Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning.

The circle’s aim is to ensure that Jewish children with special needs and their families are integrated into the wider Jewish community, by matching up each child with a teenage friend or friends with whom he or she hangs out at a set time once a week.

“For Jewish kids with disabilities, there are very limited options to socialize with typical kids” in the Jewish community, said Lenore Layman, director of special needs and disability services at PJLL. Jewish day schools and Jewish youth groups often are unable to provide the support they need, and such youngsters are “really very isolated from the [Jewish] community. It’s very important … to fill this gap.”

Layman said she had heard about Friendship Circle a few years ago, when Chabad was not sponsoring it here, and decided to start a similar program in the D.C. area last fall. But she wasn’t aware that the Kaplans, after arriving in Montgomery County about two years ago, had made starting a local circle program one of their goals ‹ and were busy launching it at the same time Layman was working on Chaverim Connection.

Layman said her group made about 10 successful matches this past year, while the Kaplans made close to the same number and have recruited 20 special needs families and more than 25 volunteers for the coming year.

Chana Kaplan meets with all the volunteers and families in order to pair the children up with their teen friends, and said the process is akin to “making a shidduch,” a marital match.

“I hope and pray the match is good,” said Kaplan, who facilitates the pairing by attending the first meeting and taking a photo.

She said she is glad to be able to start the program in the D.C. area.

“It’s so needed fundamentally [and] it’s so simple, but it hadn’t been done,” she said.

Parents “see a new dimension [of their child] they’ve never seen before,” said Mendel Kaplan. “All these people are [usually] trying to elicit a response from their child” in what can be a “very pressurized” environment.

“These teenagers just want to be their friends. … They’re nonjudgmental,” he said.

He stresses that “this is not a baby-sitting program” and noted that in other areas, teens have continued their relationships with their friends beyond high school.

“They really bond with these children,” he said.

The rabbi has plans to expand the Friendship Circle next year beyond what is called the “Friends At Home” program to include other activities. Among them would be a few holiday parties for the teens, their friends and their families, giving everyone a chance to meet and interact with each other in a fun setting.

“If they’re looking to network, moms and dads will be able to talk amongst themselves,” Kaplan said.

The project does matches in D.C. and Montgomery County, but Kaplan said that Chabad of Northern Virginia’s Rabbi Sholom Deitsch hopes to start a Friendship Circle in that area.

Participants in Friendship Circle and Chaverim Connection say they’re looking forward to activities like holiday parties, and say the program has already been beneficial in a number of ways.

Sherri Chevat of Potomac said that Friendship Circle has given her 13-year-old son, Michael, an opportunity to practice his social skills with a typical peer.

She noted that children with special issues often attend social skills groups, but such groups do not usually provide a “natural setting” for children to practice those skills.

But when Michael gets together with his friend for such activities as going to the movies, playing Nintendo or taking a walk, it provides a “relaxed setting” where he can improve his social skills.

Beth Shapiro said the program provides an invaluable experience for her 6-year-old daughter, Hannah ‹ it gives her a “free-play experience with someone else, rather than teachers, therapists and parents telling her what to do.”

“When [her friend Dana] walks in the door, she’s happy to see her and knows what it’s all about ‹ she gets to do whatever she wants,” said Shapiro, who said the two do “friend stuff” like blowing bubbles and drawing with chalk on the driveway.

Potomac’s Jaclyn Rattner, 16, who was part of Chaverim Connection this past year, said she does “whatever [her friend Gabby] wants to do,” which has included baking and various games.

“It makes me feel I can make someone else happy, not just myself,” she said.