{"id":102832,"date":"2025-08-28T21:11:29","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T21:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/102832\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T21:11:29","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T21:11:29","slug":"friendship-bench-program-offers-mental-health-healing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/102832\/","title":{"rendered":"Friendship Bench Program Offers Mental Health Healing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Angela Jasper, 75, embraces Robin Baxter, 63, one recent morning at the Washington, D.C., senior center where they meet a few times a month. \u201cGood to see you,\u201d says Jasper, a retired math and special education teacher in the city\u2019s public school system, who has a voice soothing enough to lower anyone\u2019s blood pressure.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood to see you, Miss Angela,\u201d says Baxter, who sports a black shirt studded with the words \u201cFaith. Sending all issues to Heaven&#8221; in sequins.<\/p>\n<p>Jasper is Baxter\u2019s \u201cgrandparent.\u201d That\u2019s her title as a volunteer with Friendship Bench DC, a program launched last summer as a pilot project by HelpAge USA, a Washington-based nonprofit devoted to empowering older adults in the U.S. and worldwide, and has begun gathering steam in the past few months.<\/p>\n<p>Jasper is among a group of 10 older Washingtonians who serve as grandparents on the city\u2019s Friendship Benches, which are located both inside and outdoors at host sites \u2014 social service organizations, schools, recreation centers and houses of worship \u2014 around the city. There, the grandparents listen to people (called \u201cvisitors\u201d) share their feelings and discuss their problems, usually for about 45 minutes to an hour per session.<\/p>\n<p>             <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"uxdia-c-spinner\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aarp.net\/etc\/uxdia\/images\/uxdia-spinner.svg\" role=\"presentation\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                        <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"cmp-image__image cmp-image__image@tablet\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/250528_GK_Bench124.jpg\" alt=\"A photo shows the indoor Friendship Bench at the senior center in Washington, D.C., where Angela Jasper and Robin Baxter often meet.\" title=\"Friendship Bench Program Offers Mental Health Support\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1177\" loading=\"eager\"\/><\/p>\n<p>        The indoor Friendship Bench at the senior center where Jasper and Baxter often meet<\/p>\n<p>        Greg Kahn<\/p>\n<p>The grandparents aren\u2019t therapists. They\u2019re more like nonjudgmental, compassionate friends who\u2019ll listen patiently, keep your secrets and ask questions that will make you think and, maybe, lead you toward positive changes.<\/p>\n<p>Friendship Bench DC is modeled on the original Friendship Bench program in Zimbabwe, launched almost 20 years ago by Dixon Chibanda, one of fewer than 20 psychiatrists in a country of about 17 million, to broaden access to mental health care. The organization, now partnered with the government, has trained 3,000 grandmothers across Zimbabwe in the basics of cognitive behavioral therapy (including empathetic listening techniques). As in D.C., the sessions are free.<\/p>\n<p>Why grandmothers? \u201cThey have this amazing ability to convey empathy, a lot more than grandfathers, a lot more than young people,\u201d Chibanda said in a recent phone interview with AARP. (You can read his new book, The Friendship Bench: How Fourteen Grandmothers Inspired a Mental Health Revolution, for more on the program\u2019s remarkable story.)<\/p>\n<p>Many other organizations and individuals around the U.S. are eager to begin their own Friendship Bench programs, says Cindy Cox-Roman, president and CEO of HelpAge USA, who hopes to see it take root in other communities. \ufeff She says a recent webinar about the success of Friendship Bench DC drew attendees from across the U.S. Some similar efforts have sprung up more casually, inspired by Friendship Bench Zimbabwe but without its involvement, such as Arizona State University&#8217;s All Ears Friendship Bench Program. There, older adult volunteers sit on benches, next to a sign saying, &#8220;I&#8217;m All Ears! Talk to Me About Anything,\u201d encouraging passersby to stop and chat.<\/p>\n<p>Coming soon: Friendship Bench NOLA, housed within the school of social work at Southern University at New Orleans and readying for a soft launch in New Orleans in September. But it uses a different model than Zimbabwe\u2019s and DC\u2019s: The \u201cgrandparent\u201d role is filled by \u201csupporters\u201d \u2014 community members of various ages \u201cwho are already doing healing work,\u201d says Carol Bebelle, 75, who\u2019s worked in community health for decades in the city and helped initiate the program with the Zimbabwe effort in mind. The first group of NOLA\u2019s supporters, also trained by Friendship Bench in Zimbabwe, includes mental health counselors, a massage therapist and a nurse (the youngest is in her late 20s) who will begin meeting with people (\u201cneighbors,\u201d they\u2019re called) in the Lower Ninth Ward next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Angela Jasper, 75, embraces Robin Baxter, 63, one recent morning at the Washington, D.C., senior center where they&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[74487,64,63,74486,74484,74490,74489,74483,74488,137,74491,514,74492,74485,515],"class_list":{"0":"post-102832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-all-ears-friendship-bench-program","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-friendship-bench","12":"tag-friendship-bench-dc","13":"tag-friendship-bench-grandparents","14":"tag-friendship-bench-nola","15":"tag-friendship-bench-program","16":"tag-friendship-bench-zimbabwe","17":"tag-health","18":"tag-helpage-usa","19":"tag-mental-health","20":"tag-mental-health-support-programs","21":"tag-mental-health-volunteer","22":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}