 Buddies Arrive at NetAid The buddies are taking over. NetAid's New York office is turning into a virtual buddy hostel as friends pour in from around the U.S. First it was just the back of the office--now they're taking over our desks and chairs. Food has started to disappear from the fridge and the bathrooms are always occupied. We must have underestimated how committed young Americans are to sending their friends to school. It's taken us days just to count all the buddies that have flooded into the office. Students everywhere from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, to Jupiter, Florida, have sent in their friends. No one's been too young or too old to send a friend. Second-graders and high-school juniors from the same school have sent their buddies; so have their parents and teachers. And among the thousands of buddies, we have yet to find two that are the same. Cardboard friends spackled with bright colors sit alongside buddies dressed in real fabric. By our rough calculations, every single buddy--and there are a lot of them here--represents about 20,000 children who cannot go to school. Over 100 million kids worldwide cannot go to school. It's taken a whole lot of buddies to hammer home the point of just how big that number really is. Read the next entry of the BuddyBlog, Students Bring Buddies to Congress, and see the buddies turn into Washington lobbyists. | 
