WAMU31%
Friendship Benches lets volunteers lend a listening ear at D.C. libraries 7%
By Joneill11%
8/4/2026, 8:22:14 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 17 faulty reasoning types, including Optimism Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Confirmation Bias, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 13.2% saturation with 111 hits. Analysis detected 576 faulty-reasoning hits from 840 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 17% and a BS Rank of 7% (25,612 of 27,323 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 93.70% of the article peer group.
Joe Hawthorne, 46, starts his Friday morning with oatmeal and berries in his Anacostia home.
After he puts away his dishes, Joe grabs his keys and heads out the door.
This morning, Hawthorne is not going to work, but he’s in good spirits.
“ I feel pretty good.,” he said.
“I’m always looking forward to talking to Ms.
Scarlett.”
He is going to the Martin Luther King Jr.
Memorial Library in Chinatown for his third Friendship Bench DC appointment, where he’ll sit down and have a conversation with an older volunteer named Scarlet Small, who is 73 years old.
In this program, people can sign up for free appointments to have conversations with an older volunteer, called a “grandparent”, who has been trained in basic talk-therapy techniques.
The people seeking out the conversation, which the program calls “visitors”, share whatever is on their mind.
While the volunteers actively listen, they help the visitor come up with an action plan to navigate their problems.
Friendship Bench DC is an official adaptation of a program that was started in 2006 by psychiatrist Dr.
Dixon Chibanda in Zimbabwe.
The it’s implemented by the nonprofit HelpAge USA, an organization that advocates for the well-being and inclusion of older people .
Dr.
Chibanda created it, he said, as a way to fill the mental health care gap in his country.
At the time, as he described in his TED Talk , he was one of only twelve psychiatrists in Zimbabwe, and people were dying due to lack of access to mental health care.
“Grandmothers are in every community, there are hundreds of them…so I thought, ‘what about training grandmothers in evidence-based talk therapy techniques which they can deliver on a bench?’”
Cindy Cox-Roman is the President and CEO of HelpAge USA, and after she read about Dr.
Chibanda’s original Friendship Bench program, she thought it might work in the U.S.
In 2024, HelpAge USA created the Friendship Bench DC launched in community wellness centers, senior centers, and schools across the District.
Two years later, HelpAge USA expanded Friendship Bench DC into D.C. public libraries, starting with the Mt.
Pleasant, Anacostia, Woodbridge, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Memorial Library branches.
Besides leading HelpAge USA, Cox-Roman is also a gerontologist, someone who studies aging, and said that older people are particularly well-suited for this work.
She said many are retired and “want to do something meaningful with their time.”
“ When you’re older, you’ve lived through a lot,” she said.
“You’ve developed a stronger empathy muscle… many people are more self-confident.
Their egos are more well-formed.”
Which, she said, makes older people great at listening to visitors and helping them work through their problems.
Jean Badalementi is the Manager of Health and Human Services for DC Public Libraries, adds that libraries are a natural fit for this program..
“ People are here, it’s where people are congregating,” she said.
“Providing services where people are enables folks to access them easily instead of having to go here, there, and everywhere.”
Badalamenti also said that what Friendship Bench DC provides fits the mission of the library.
“ Certainly, a library is about literacy, but actually, literacy is about health and wellness.”
People are also looking for a way to feel more connected, Badalamenti said, and to talk about difficult emotions.
A study of census data shows that Washington, D.C. is one of the loneliest city in the United States , with nearly half of all households consisting of just one person.
At the Martin Luther King Jr.
Memorial Library in Chinatown, Joe and Ms.
Scarlett settled in for their conversation.
Hawthorne updated Ms.
Scarlett about a home construction project that was stressing him out.
They also discussed his job, and how he’s trying to stay in better touch with his extended family.
Friendship Bench DC volunteers undergo 30 hours of training over the course of 10 weeks.
After the initial training period, volunteers partake in practice sessions, which can, in some cases, take a few months to complete before certification.
The conversation flowed back and forth.
After each of his updates, Ms.
Scarlett asked questions to challenge his perspective and help him create solutions.
After their time was up, Hawthorne said he felt empowered about his next steps.
“I leave with an action plan of like, ‘well you’ve been doing this and it’s been working this way, so either continue or discontinue that thing or add add to that thing.’”
Ms.
Scarlett has been a Friendship Bench DC volunteer for almost three years.
She said the opportunity to make conversations around mental health more accessible is what drives her.
“We know that mental health, to whatever degree, is either not affordable or not available… it’s such a stigma in the community.”
HelpAge USA hopes to expand the Friendship Bench DC program into more locations across the district, including more libraries.
The post Friendship Benches lets volunteers lend a listening ear at D.C. libraries appeared first on WAMU .
Speakers
6speakers46%attributed speech456writer words
Selected voice
74%flagged-word coverageJoe Hawthorne
62 attributed words16% of attributed speech15% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.