Episode 11: Becoming Best Buddies – with Anthony Kennedy Shriver
Jordan: Welcome to the Plan for Special Needs Trusts podcast presented by PLAN, the Planned Lifetime Assistance Network of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Our plan is your Plan, and I'm your host, Jordan Rich. 

Today we're honored to once again hook up with one of our partners, Best Buddies International. Best Buddies is a global volunteer movement, creating opportunities for one to one friendships, integrated employment, leadership development, and inclusive living for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. 

Now we featured a local New England representative of Best Buddies a while back, but when the opportunity came up to chat with founder and chairman Anthony Kennedy Shriver, we decided we couldn't pass this opportunity up. Anthony Kennedy Shriver is the founder, chairman and CEO of Best Buddies International, comprised of nine programs that positively impact more than 1.3 million individuals with and without disabilities worldwide. And, Anthony, before you and I settle in for a quick interview, the Executive Director of PLAN of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Joan McGrath, is here with an official welcome. 

Joan: I just wanted to reach out and say thank you for taking the time to do this. I really appreciate it. PLAN has been around for 50 years, and we appreciate the opportunity to support Best Buddies and your mission. We feel it's closely aligned to our mission. So thank you so much for doing it. 
 
Anthony: Yeah, my pleasure. No problem. Happy to do it. Glad to meet you. 

Jordan: Thank you so much. Joan, she and her team, helping to preserve assets, protect access to public benefits, and helping people to live well and working in conjunction with organizations like Best Buddies for years now. So, Anthony, if we could a bit of the history of Best Buddies and the involvement of your family and you in this venture? 

Anthony: Well, I'm blessed to have grown up in the Kennedy family. My mother started Special Olympics, as I think many people know, so sort of got with the bug of service and nonprofit sector at a very young age and saw my parents and all the incredible work that they had done in their careers and totally inspired by them. And they've been partners with me in this effort as well for a long time and are great agents of social change and social entrepreneurs themselves. So I kind of got started because of my family, as so many of my siblings have and my cousins have over the years. It's a family affair, part of our family business, I'd say. So we're lucky to be, I think, in the best business in the world. And then I had an incredibly profound and deep relationship with my aunt, Rosemary Kennedy, who had severe intellectual developmental disability and founded the Best Buddies on the premise of friendship inclusion, socialization, that those are really the things that move our hearts and move our spirits connection to another human being. And what could be a better way to get people with intellectual and developmental opportunities in our community and how better can we support them than through friendship and mentoring and launched a program at Georgetown University out of my college dorm room and have been added ever since by the grace of God. So I'm a lucky guy and thank God all the time for being in this field and giving me the wherewithal, the health and the fortitude to keep staying at it day after day. And the buddies continue to inspire me and everything that I do from this past weekend, of all the activities that went on to be humbled by all the success we've had and all the people that have joined us in this effort? 

Jordan: Well, helping people with developmental disabilities is very much the family business. Your brother is still very much involved with Special Olympics. 

Anthony: We have different partnerships that we have been working on for a long time, but we're completely separate organizations, and we operate separate 501(c)(3) with boards and budgets. We focus in really a different area than Special Olympics, more in employment, housing, mentoring, leadership training. Obviously they're more in the sports development field, but we have different efforts and different marketing campaigns that we have worked on together, and those small collaborations have been really good. 

Jordan: How is the overall acceptance of people with developmental disabilities? How has it changed since you started Best Buddies? I mean, the terms that we actually use have certainly been modified and hopefully helped people understand better. What's your take on the trajectory? 

Anthony: I think it's a whole another ball game in every shape, form, or fashion. It's nothing similar to what it was like when I first started, and certainly nothing similar to what it was like in the 70s when my mother had Special Olympics in the 60s in our backyard. I have very vivid memories of all the participants arriving in yellow buses that were dilapidated and old, showing up in terrible old clothes and terrible hygiene, old sneakers and unlaced sneakers and running around in pants and no uniforms, no education and completely living in isolated institutional environments. And I visited Willowbrook when I was a young man. And the strides that the country as a whole has made is really remarkable in my judgment. I think everybody in the field, from people up at the federal level, the Congress, has done a great job. The presidents over the years, some of them have done great jobs and really interested in this population. President Kennedy, as you know, was the first President ever welcomed a child with Down’s Syndrome in the White House in history. So I think that was a great first step. And he created the President's Council on what was called that mental retardation, which is a great first step. And I think he really launched that initiative with my mother right by his side, pushing him along, and she was really the one that pushed him into this whole area, got him to focus. But I mean, that was the beginning of change, I think for this population. Everything changed from the 60s going forward. And I was born in the 60s. So I mean, I've seen dramatic change and so many people deserve credit for it. But at the end of the day, it's been a collaboration of billions of people, all sort of rally behind the cause where you see today different terminology. You see people, a girl with down syndrome and the Victoria's Secret fashion show, and you see them as models. You see the Super Bowl commercials, you see them right here working at my office, working at some of the most powerful law firms in the country and some of the most successful companies in the world. You see them living independently in the community in their own apartments, driving their own cars, paying taxes, getting pension plans, participating in 401ks, living in first class apartment buildings, along with other people who are non disabled through our living program. So there's so many examples of success. There's a lot to be done, which is exciting and disappointing at the same time, but to me, I'm optimistic of it. The unemployment rate is super high to the 80%, super high. When I first got at this in the high 90s and had no opportunity, most of them working in sheltered workshops or in isolated environments or stuffing envelopes, that's still going on. But for the most part, we're moving away from that, and everybody understands we need to move away from that. People with intellectual disabilities are getting educated in public schools all over the United States. That wasn't going on 50 years ago. Some of them are still very isolated. The best place is a great way to include them and integrate them into daily life in a public school. Most private schools are pretty isolated, especially at the elementary school level and the high school level, very rare that you see a person with disabilities going to a parochial school or a regular private school in the community. So that would be a great new frontier for us if we were able to get that to happen. 

But I mean, there's a lot of positives and I'm overly optimistic and grateful to so many people for having worked super hard to make this all a reality. So it's been a great journey and to have seen it. I mean, I know it's never fast enough, but over the course of history of time, 50 years, it's like half a second, not even a half a second, one 10th of 100th of a second in the history of time. So it's moved pretty well over 50 years. 

Jordan: The philosophy behind best buddies has now been very much in play for decades, and it's working. How do you classify or quantify the overall philosophy, this idea of friendship forming buddies? 

Anthony: I always look at it as something that's completely equal on equal playing field. I think any relationship, only relationships to thrive in life are ones that are built on mutual trust and a two-way street where everybody brings something to the table. And I think those are the ones that thrive, whether it's a marriage, whether it's best friends, whether it's Best Buddies, everybody's got to bring somebody to the table. And every relationship I have with a person with special needs, I get a lot out of it. It's the same old thing. Many people say they get more out of it than the buddy themselves, but I think it's mutual. They get a lot. We get a lot. And I think those are the relationships that thrive and endure and carry on for decades. And those connections, when anybody's doing all the work, whether it's a marriage or a friendship, it just doesn't thrive and doesn't work. So I think everybody's got a God given talent, as I've always said, and I don't care how disabled they are, they bring something to the table. I mean, my aunt had profound intellectual disabilities, wore a diaper her whole adult life, and never held a job, needed 24-hour day care. But she changed the world through her spirit and through her existence and through God creating her. She inspired the President of the United States. She inspired my mother, she inspired me. And not only are the millions of people that have participated through all these programs that President Kennedy set up, I'm set up with your Best Buddies. They've inspired tens of millions of people to be better human beings, to be more inclusive, to reach out and know that we're stronger and happier and richer as a people when we include everybody and everybody has a seat at the table. And I think the whole concept of Best Buddies is the idea that everybody has to see at the table. Nobody makes it to the top. I don't care whether Elon Musk or Warren Buffett, Bill Gates or President Biden. None of those guys, or Arnold Schwarzenegger. None of those guys get to the top of their game alone. And any one of them that says they do, they're just lying to their teeth. In my judgment. It's just impossible. And I wouldn't be sitting at this desk or in this job or having gotten to where I am without two incredible parents, a great family, and a great network and individuals that believe passing what we're doing and constantly elevating me down days trying to inspire me to keep going, staying at it. So I think all these things are an enormous collaboration of energy and passion, spirit, and goodwill to each other. And I think that's the basis of Best Buddies. And I think that's why we continue to crush it. I never worry. I never stressed about our budget or our future. I know it will do well because we do the right things and we're elevating people. And I think God always blesses organizations and people that do that. And if it's not in the short term, it's the long term. And I'm a long term player and you never let me down 

Jordan: Before we close you alluded to something as we record this to something that just happened over the weekend. And I'm not exactly sure what it was, but I saw your eyes light up a little bit when you talked about it. Can you just relay a couple of very quick examples of Best Buddies at work with you in tow and what you've seen and what you feel when you see it? 

Anthony: Yes, we had Best Buddies living. I visited our living operation in Washington, DC, connected with Catholic University on Capitol Hill. We have several buddies living there in a completely full high-end office and high-end apartment complex. And they're thriving. They live with support from us, but they have jobs, they write public transportation, they pay taxes, they have lunch and dinner and breakfast there. And they're just fully integrated in the community. And when I walk around a building like that, it just lights my heart up. I'm super proud of them and I'm super proud of where we can go. I like to have 100,000 apartment buildings like that full of people with intellectual disabilities. It changes the dynamic of the apartment, makes the people in the apartment who are living there appreciate their God given talent, their health, just to be alive in there, the luxury and the beauty of the building. And when I walk around to think that that was even a possibility five years ago or ten years ago would have been out of the question. Everybody would have said, put them in an institution, put them in a group home, isolated, all living together. So I see that it's just fantastic. And then they come out and they're walking around. We have a walk, 1500 people on The Mall wedged between the Capitol and the Washington Monument, and all those people coming out on a beautiful spring day in Washington, DC, to celebrate inclusion and acceptance and diversity and to celebrate people that have IQs, maybe a little bit less than you or me, that bring enormous gifts and spirit and energy to the table. That changes our country and changes our government and changes our cities. It's a remarkable thing. Parents coming up and thanking me and so grateful and so excited about the future of their son or their daughter. Parents coming up who have ten year old kids with Down’s Syndrome saying, oh my God, what a relief. There's going to be some place for my kids to live when I'm dead and some place that's safe and clean and great. My kids can have a job, they can live at Best Buddies and they can work through Best Buddies, and they can have a network of socialization through Best Buddies. I mean, I don't know. To me, that's what it's all about, living. That's why we're alive. That's why we're on the planet. It makes me feel excellent. 

Jordan: It should. It makes all of us feel a lot better. About the work you're doing. And finally, it's called Best Buddies International. We talked about the local scene here in New England and nationally. But what's the future like internationally for the organization as it continues to grow? 

Anthony: Yes. I mean, I think everybody needs to be everywhere in the world. We should be in every country in the world. The spirit of inclusion and acceptance and mercy and love is a universal feeling, and we need to bring it everywhere. We're in 53 countries now. I think it is 53 or 54. Our goal is to be 100 within the next ten years. So we'll work heavily on that. We hope to have a whole activation around the World Cup. We may be doing a cycling event in Qatar during the World Cup to bring awareness to this mission. We have a thriving program in Qatar right now, an education city, and many of the schools are participating in Best Buddies. We have our employment program going in Doha, the capital of Qatar. So we got a lot of great stuff happening internationally. We need to do more. Some Scandinavian countries are doing stuff better than we're doing in the United States. But for the most part, the world needs Best Buddies need Special Olympics, and we need to do more. I was disappointed. We're going to have the World Special Olympic Games in Russia, which got canceled this year due to the war in the Ukraine, which is obviously super sad. And obviously those kinds of things are disappointing. But we'll fly forward good times ahead, and we're going to keep reaching out and trying to bring it to as many communities on the globe as possible. I think it's what our culture needs. I think it's what our countries need in our cities need not only the United States, but everywhere. And I think it changes the fabric and the culture of our communities when you incorporate in all people of all walks of life, all ethnic backgrounds, all economic backgrounds and all intellectual backgrounds. So that's the name of the game, in my judgment. 

Jordan: Well, on behalf of Plan of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, it has a great working relationship with Best Buddies. Thanks for taking the time out and chatting with us and sharing it on this podcast. And one thing about Anthony Shriver, I've come to know now you have boundless enthusiasm and that Kennedy smile, which really goes a long way to promoting what you're doing. So we thank you and wish you the best. 

Anthony: Have a great day. 

Jordan: We want to thank you for listening to the Plan for Special Needs Trusts podcast presented by PLAN, the Planned Lifetime Assistance Network of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. PLAN is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit company where the goal for every one of its clients is always to preserve assets, protect benefits, and live well. For more, visit www.Planofma-ri.org. We invite you to subscribe, download, rate and review this podcast and thank you for sharing it with others. Our plan is your plan.