The Buddy Walk® is a great time for bringing families, friends and communities together to raise awareness for the acceptance and inclusion of people with Down syndrome. The My Great Story campaign's Buddy Walk section is the perfect way to share your Buddy Walk experience with other walkers and those who couldn't make it in person.
The Buddy Walk blog posts stories from the My Great Story campaign on Buddy Walk Wednesdays - share your story for a chance to be featured! Click here to check out the Buddy Walk blog.
Click here to visit the My Great Story public awareness campaign and to share your story.
Buddy Walk Organizers:
Click here to download the My Great Story Buddy Walk flyer to distribute at your Walk and encourage your participants to share their stories!
The following was written by Brian Skotko, MD, MPP, a Physician at Children’s Hospital Boston’s Down Syndrome Program. It’s in response to a feature in GQ magazine that used insensitive language.
On July 15, John B. Thompson of GQ magazine slammed Bostonians as the worst dressed in the nation. Evidently, our beloved Beantown is actually a “bad-taste storm sewer” where all the worst fashion ideas come to “stagnate and putrefy.” He further decries, “Boston suffers from a kind of Style Down Syndrome , where a little extra ends up ruining everything.”
Go ahead, GQ, and mock my blue whale-emblemed Nantucket-red pants. Laugh if you want at the loud argyles that I prefer to wear with my black suit. I don’t even care if you dismiss the sexy pink polka-dotted tie that I like to wear with my blue-checkered shirt in clinic. But, whatever you do, do not mess with my sister.
My sister, Kristin, has Down syndrome, and let me explain what “Style Down Syndrome” really is. “Style Down Syndrome” is smiling when everyone else prefers to frown. It’s spending three summers, in sheer determination, learning to ride a bike because you want the freedom to be like everyone else. It’s singing tunes from Grease at the top of your lungs with your friends. It’s celebrating a third-place victory at a swim meet with as much gusto as the gold medalist.
Style Down Syndrome is strong-willed, persevering, and forgiving—because it has to be.
People with Down syndrome are ridiculed on a daily basis. Although not as obvious as GQ’s sport, children with Down syndrome do not always get invited to birthday parties just because they have Down syndrome. Young adults, freshly minted from high school, sometimes have trouble finding post-secondary opportunities. And, adults with Down syndrome are often the first to be fired when the economy tanks.
All of this comes at a time when people with Down syndrome are achieving previously unimagined successes. They are graduating, working, living and loving within our communities. So, why do people underestimate their abilities? It must be because they do not know someone with Down syndrome.
Because, if they did, they would come to appreciate the life lessons that accompany their extra chromosome.
If my friends who are black were mocked, they would not take it. If my friends who are gay were slurred, they would not take it. My 400,000 fellow Americans with Down syndrome have been cheapened, and I will not take it. I invite GQ magazine to introduce its readers to real people with Down syndrome through the My Great Story campaign of the National Down Syndrome Society.
The original GQ piece has been changed, removing the 'Down Syndrome' reference. No explanatory note appears on the page.
People with Down syndrome have inspiring stories and life experiences. Here is an opportunity to share those stories on a national level. The NDSS is launching an amazing campaign called My Great Story to showcase the unique experiences that make an individual's life special. The inspiring stories of Sara Wolff, The Public Speaker and Sujeet Desai, The Traveler are included in the overview. Instructions on how to share your story or the story of a person who has touched your life provided on the site.
Join the National Down Syndrome Society's campaign to celebrate and honor the great stories of the 400,000 Americans living with Down syndrome.
Submit your story or the story of a friend/family member here.
