For years, Sammie Vance, 14, has been helping kids who feel lonely make friends. She has been 1 the Buddy Bench program since the third grade. The program was that anyone at school feeling 2 could sit on the "buddy bench", telling other kids he or she needed a friend.
Sammie got the 3 for the program at a summer camp in 2017. She thought it would be cool to have a buddy bench in her 4 , so when she returned, she 5 the idea to the headteacher.
Getting 6 for the project was just the first step. "There have been a lot of other 7 , like money, " Sammie says. To cut down costs and be eco-friendly, Sammie decided to make the bench out of 8 material. So she got her community to gather bottle caps.
9 of the project got out, and soon Sammie was getting caps from people in all 50 states, and even from people in Germany, the Netherlands, and other countries. 10 , she collected more than 1, 200 pounds of bottle caps. A company called Green Tree Plastics was 11 of upcycling (升级改造) these into three benches.
Not long after that, 12 her own school, more than 200 schools and parks nationwide, in Mexico and Australia 13 benches through the program as well. Her work continues to spread 14 far and wide. "We recently got a bench in Ghana, Africa, " she says.
Sammie thinks her small gesture can make other people's day and that even small acts of kindness can 15 .
