By Hannah Burney
On April 12th, folks from Hamilton, Butler County, and the Southwest part of the state gathered in Marcum Park for a celebration of diversity and inclusion in the 2025 Best Buddies Friendship Walk hosted by Best Buddies International.
Best Buddies International is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to creating a global movement of volunteers that provides opportunities for friendships, integrated employment, leadership development, inclusive living, and family support for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). “Our founder likes to say that our goal is really to put ourselves out of business,” Casey Goldman-Davis said. “The ideal thing that we are working towards is the world really being completely inclusive and accepting of all people regardless of their abilities, so that we don't have to make special, different opportunities.”
As a global organization, Best Buddies operates internationally, as well as on a state level, with local and regional chapters. Goldman-Davis is the area director for Southwest Ohio, which includes Butler, Hamilton, Montgomery, Green, Adams, and Warren Counties. Currently, there are twelve chapters operating in eleven schools in the region, with several of those being in Hamilton and Butler County.
Each local chapter is through a local school and typically operates much like an after school club. Best Buddies takes an active role in selecting student leadership – looking for students who will take the role seriously. It is also important that one of the leadership roles is filled by someone with an IDD, so they can be represented in decision making in their chapter.
At the very core of what Best Buddies does is friendship matching. Students with and without IDDs can join their Best Buddies chapter. Students will then be buddied together to create connection and friendship. “We take one person with IDD and one person without and we friendship match them, so they have that social connection and feel less isolated,” Goldman-Davis said.
Each chapter is unique and along with their leadership is allowed the freedom to choose which initiatives and activities make sense for that specific school. “They do social bonding activities like making posters together – they make inclusive sayings on posters they put up in their school,” Goldman-Davis said “Other times it might be an event. We just did the walk and our schools have gotten together in the weeks leading up to that and done fundraising or making t-shirts, making posters that they can carry around when they did that walk. It's also training. Twice a year we go in and we do a training with all of our schools. We focus on leadership and life skills.”
Along with student opportunities at nearly every grade level, Best Buddies in southwest Ohio has started a new initiative called Citizens. This program is specific to the city of Hamilton and Butler County, although calls for expansion have already come. Citizens partners with the Butler County Board of Developmental Disabilities to provide friendship for IDD adults. According to Goldman Davis, an adult with IDD has a network of only about six people, whereas the average person has a network of 120 people. “There's just not a lot for adults with disabilities” she said. “We really wanted for them to have experience having friendships with other people who don't have IDD.”
The Friendship Walk is one of the two big fundraisers held each year. “I would say it provides about one of every seven operating dollars that it costs to do our programs in the schools, but also these community programs we do with adults,” Goldman-Davis said.
The walk for this region began at Miami University, which is Ohio's oldest active chapter. Kate Malo, the volunteer committee chair, and a graduate from Miami, realized it was time to move locations to something a little larger. “[She] still wanted it to be be accessible, wheelchair-friendly, and nearby to Butler County Board of Developmental Disabilities,” Goldman-Davis said. “As such – our partnership with Marcum Park was born.”
As with similar fundraising events there are several ways to join the walk and raise money. There is the option to walk as an individual, or join a friends and family team, school team, or corporate team. The walk is currently the only free fundraising event put on by the organization, so it is a great opportunity to experience firsthand what Best Buddies is all about.
The friendship walk is not about getting the best time or athleticism. “At Marcum Park, it's not like a 5k,” Goldman-Davis said. “We just walk the perimeter four times and that's a mile. It's honestly not even so much about having a rigorous walk per se. It's really just a party where we all come together. We have games, free food and entertainment, and we all just get together and have a celebration.”
Best Buddies is meeting an important need. The programs in Southwest Ohio have grown by 60% in the last year. When Goldman-Davis started with Best Buddies in October 2024 there were 7 chapters in southwest Ohio with about 400 individuals across the schools. Now there are twelve chapters and over 1000 individuals involved. There is great need for this type of support and connection for IDD individuals and their families and every dollar raised goes back to directly support the programs. “It's friendship, it's leadership, and so it takes a lot of man hours or person power,” Goldman-Davis said. “It's our people who go out into the schools and the communities.”
Not only is the organization growing, the 2025 Best Buddies Friendship Walk was also the biggest walk yet in terms of registration, funds raised, and awareness. The fundraising goal for the walk was $60,000 and they surpassed their goal, raising $64,125. More than 620 people registered for the walk. “For context, last year we had 485 register and the year before that it was 330,” Goldman-Davis said.
This was also the biggest year for walk sponsors with the Hamilton community showering support. “It's like the community truly rallied around this, especially in the final weeks leading up to it,” Goldman Davis said. “We saw our numbers jump up in ways we weren't expecting at all. This is also the biggest year of sponsors. A lot of community businesses in and around Hamilton really showed up for the cause, and that just made it that much more successful.”
With the community rallying behind it, the Best Buddies Friendship Walk was a huge success. “The friendship walk is just a giant celebration,” Goldman-Davis said. “It's a joyful day where we all come together, we celebrate inclusion, and we celebrate our amazing supporters and people who helped make it all possible. It's just a big party.”