Windsor needs more buddy benches

By Alyssa Leonard

Students at St. Angela Catholic Elementary School never feel alone when sitting on the Buddy Bench.

Last spring, St. Angela held a school-wide event to introduce students to the concept of the new Buddy Bench.

The bench is a safe place for students to sit who are feeling bullied or lonely. Students and faculty have been taught to approach any student sitting on the bench to ask them what’s wrong.

Staff at the school said they are seeing the students use the bench.

“The kids love the bench,” said Sherrie McCarthy, a secretary at St. Angela who sees the bench being used every day. “I don’t think it is (used) solely for bullying.”

McCarthy said no one feels alone sitting on the bench any more. She said as soon as someone sits down, five or six kids come and join them.

The idea for the bench started with the Friendship Bench in Ottawa after Sam Fiorella’s son, 19-year-old Lucas, committed suicide at Carleton University in 2014.  Lucas was suffering from depression but had not sought help.

Fiorella started the Lucas Fiorella Friendship Bench campaign in his son’s honour after learning how much his son helped others to talk about their mental health issues and encouraged them to seek help — all of this before taking his own life.

“After his death we discovered that Lucas focused his efforts on helping others,” said Fiorella in a YouTube video introducing the campaign. “Lucas saw his peers were feeling suicidal somehow and lent an ear, lent a shoulder and stayed with them until they asked for help.”

Fiorella wanted to create a place for people to go when they want someone to talk to or just someone to listen. He said he hopes the bench helps get people to talk more openly about their mental health.

Since then, many friendship and buddy benches have been installed at schools all across Canada. But Windsorite Margit Simon wants to see more implemented at schools around Windsor.

“(The bench is) very important,” said Simon. “I’m trying to get somebody to talk to me from the school board to start something like that. It’s a very nice project.”

Simon learned about the Friendship Bench campaign through her son Jason who had been a friend of Lucas at Carleton University.

Jason committed suicide a year after Lucas. He was 20.

To request a bench be placed at a local school, a parent could approach a school administrator who could then ask for a buddy bench from Kill It With Kindness or a friendship bench from the Lucas Fiorella Friendship Bench campaign.