Lend-a-Friend!

According to Center for Disease Control (CDC):

• 1 in every 59 children are affected with Autism

• 1 in every 700 children are affected with Down Syndrome

• 1 in every 8 children suffer from Social Anxiety Disorders

Research has found that children who lack friends tend to feel lonely and socially isolated which leads to depression and health issues later in their life.

According to the Global Childhood Index survey of 2018, 11.3% of school aged children said that they were “often” lonely.

More than half the children referred for emotional behavioral problems have no friends or find difficulty interacting with peers

"Lend a Friend” is a platform that provides an opportunity to increase social skills and provide long-lasting friendships for those who have trouble making friends! We achieve this by:

• Setting up a network of people consisting of volunteers and students who are seeking meaningful friendships

• This will all be facilitated through an app and/or a website where volunteers who are looking to mentor, and students seeking friends can sign-up to play and interact

Since we are in the pilot phase, we are managing the process via our website and offline.

If you are a parent/guardian and your child needs a friend, sign-up and provide us information about your child so that we can pair them with an appropriate volunteer.

If you are a volunteer (or parent of a volunteer) and want to extend your friendship with children who need it, sign-up so that we can pair you with those children.

10 Simple and Easy steps

1)A student who is looking for a friend/companion to play with will press the ‘I want to play with a friend’ button on the device.

2)Voice system, will ask the student “what activity would you like to do?”

3)Student will answer what he would like to do with a friend (e.g. biking, play Legos, etc.)

4) Student’s parent will be notified via email that their child is requesting to play with a friend.

5)Once Student’s parent approves the friend request, the notification will be sent to all matched volunteers based on the criteria set (all available volunteers in the set age group and school).

6)Any available volunteer can accept the request by typing in their availability time.

7) Notification is also sent to volunteer’s parent for their approval.

8) The first available volunteer to accept the student request will be paired up.

9) The student will get a volunteer availability message on their device saying “E.g.-A friend is available to play with you at xx: xx time!”

10) The volunteer will arrive at the student location at the registered address and specified time to play with the student!

We are planning to roll Lend-a-Friend out in a multi-phase approach