This month, Best Buddies Massachusetts and Rhode Island traveled to Bloomington, Indiana for the 2024 Leadership Conference! High school, college, and transitions students, job participants, and ambassadors attended along with 25 staff members. Throughout the weekend, everyone learned new things to bring back to their chapters, jobs, and everyday lives. They also got to make new relationships from all of their state and the country.

The high school and college students came to LC ready to learn how to make their chapter the best it can be. They all learned about event ideas, member retention, how to make their events more accessible and inclusive, making matches, and more. Everybody was able to collaborate to learn how other schools run their chapters. Many new friendships were born, and ideas shared.

The MA Jobs track featured 4 of our Jobs program participants, our office assistant, and 40 or so attendees from Jobs programs around the US! The highly engaging sessions focused on self-advocacy, using technology for independence, navigating your career, maintaining a work/life balance, self-care and more! We look forward to seeing our participants bring these new skills, tips and tricks to their work back in MA!

The first ever Transitions track at BBLC was a huge success! Students from MA and four other states gathered to participate in workshops that helped them prepare for life after high school. Key workshops included a job shadowing experience with the Indiana University dining staff offering hands-on experience and insights into the hospitality industry, a job exploration scavenger hunt that encouraged participants to explore various career options on a college campus, and a goal setting workshop, where attendees formed team names and created actionable goals to guide them through the weekend.

Two graduates from Plymouth South High School, Michael and Aiden, attended Best Buddies leadership conference on the transitions track for the first time. During the weekend they gave speeches about their mentoring relationship to their peers and over 100 advisors. Both Michael and Aiden reported having a great time at BBLC and can’t wait to attend again in the future! Thank you to our transitions program supporters at Fundacion MAPFRE and MAPFRE USA for attending and providing our participants with swag for the weekend!
The weekend was full of celebrating! On Friday night, we kicked off the weekend with the opening ceremony. This event had lots of important speeches, music, and even a fashion show with one of MARI’s own, Tyrone. Saturday night was our Inclusion Olympics with an opening ceremony of awards, a huge friendship walk, and countless activities, games, and dance parties. On Sunday, everybody enjoyed the closing ceremonies. We had two of our MA ambassadors give speeches in front of everybody! The festival of Friendship ended the weekend with dancing, karaoke, bowling, a movie, and more!

We are so proud of all the MARI attendees for traveling to Leadership Conference with us! We are so excited to see what everyone does with what they learned!