Westford Academy’s Best Buddies club hosted their annual dance party on Wednesday, March 18. The dance is a tradition for the club and serves as an opportunity to not only fundraise for club supplies, but to foster companionship within the Best Buddies community.
Best Buddies has been a staple within the WA community as a whole for over a decade, but the organization it originates from with the same name has been making an impact since 1989. The central aim of the organization is to connect people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) to those without IDDs in an effort to create a more inclusive school environment.
“Best Buddies has been a really fun club to be a part of and I love the community we’ve created,” sophomore and club member Alyssa Hulings said. “I’ve been an active member of the club for a while now and it’s very rewarding to make an impact.”
Upon entering the event, each attendee had to pay $5, which included an hour of dancing with other members of the club, free snacks, and music provided by a DJ.
Senior and club president Eliana Donaruma and sophomore and junior officer Addison Hale spearheaded the preparation and execution of this event. According to junior and vice president Amelia Brown, this decision was made to expose Hale to the planning process while also allowing Donaruma to lead the event one final time.
While this dance is on a smaller scale than other dances put on by other school organizations, effort and time outside of the school and club meetings was just as crucial for the creation of the event. According to Donaruma, this process included creating a flyer for their social media pages and the morning announcements to encourage student participation, sending invitations to teachers, and reserving the cafe for the afternoon. However, the load of budgeting for food was lifted this year as local restaurant Evviva Trattoria donated food for the event.
The money they received from this dance contributes to many different facets of the club. Some will be used to get general supplies for their club meetings, while a portion of the earnings will be used to cover any additional costs from their other events and a conference they attend in the summer.
“Every year over the summer, there is a Best Buddies Leadership Conference located in Indiana and it’s mandatory that at least one person from the leadership board [from the different chapters] is in attendance,” Donaruma said. “It is a pricey trip for the event itself and we want to provide any support that would be helpful to members so that the payment process is easier.”
Throughout the years, Best Buddies has introduced many different events affiliated with their club for students to participate in such as Best Buddies Prom, engagement in Unified Sports teams and the Special Olympics, and a collaboration with the WA football team during one of their games. According to Donaruma, because of their background in planning these events, tasks for the dance party were easily mitigated.
Unlike other dances that are held later in the evening, this dance party was run during the meeting time of the club.
“Since it’s a bigger event, we typically have had [the dance party] during our regular meeting time for the purposes of people being able to attend more easily,” Donaruma said. “Attendance and consistency means a lot to the members of our club regardless of how big the event is.”
According to Brown, the main goal of this event was to give participants a friendly environment that they felt comfortable in as some other functions within the school can be disorienting.
“A lot of school dances can be overwhelming with a lot of people and loud music, so this dance party gives anyone the opportunity to be a part of a low-key dance,” Brown said. “We wanted to give our buddies a good time and a place to hangout with their friends, and I think we accomplished that really well.”
