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Empower Peer Education

The document discusses peer education as a model for youth HIV education. Peer education involves sharing knowledge between individuals with similar backgrounds and experiences to build trust. It has several benefits over traditional education models, such as being more relatable for youth, helping youth develop leadership skills, and fostering positive attitudes. Research shows peer education can positively influence attitudes if designed well. The document advocates for peer-led workshops that are non-judgmental and explore how social factors like poverty, racism, and homophobia influence health choices.

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Khan Karamat Salar
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47 views4 pages

Empower Peer Education

The document discusses peer education as a model for youth HIV education. Peer education involves sharing knowledge between individuals with similar backgrounds and experiences to build trust. It has several benefits over traditional education models, such as being more relatable for youth, helping youth develop leadership skills, and fostering positive attitudes. Research shows peer education can positively influence attitudes if designed well. The document advocates for peer-led workshops that are non-judgmental and explore how social factors like poverty, racism, and homophobia influence health choices.

Uploaded by

Khan Karamat Salar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Peer Education

Objectives:
• To understand peer education and how it might be used to talk about HIV, harm reduction
and sexual health with youth.
• To examine the benefits and values of using a peer based model in youth HIV education.
• To think though key questions for using peer education in HIV programming.

What is Peer Education?


Peer education is the exchange of knowledge shared between people with similar backgrounds and experiences.
Peer education is particularly useful in exploring issues around HIV and sexual health with youth. Shared
language and common cultural reference points help build the trust that is essential to peer education. Shared
identities can cut across age, gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, housing status, etc.

Why do Peer Education?


This project was designed for youth, by youth. We believe
that youth need sex, queer, trans, and youth positive
spaces to learn and talk about sex. We also believe that
these spaces should be designed by youth for youth in
ways that are community and culturally specific.

“One size fits all” models don’t work. And it’s no mystery.

We are different people with different needs and


experiences. These experiences are based on our gender,
race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status,
where we were born, or how long we’ve been in a specific
country. It depends on where and when we’ve gone to
school and if we live in a big city or a rural community.

By working with youth from different communities,


we seek to create a space where youth can learn and
share from each others’ realities, while simultaneously
strengthening youth participation within local HIV
movements and programming.

FEBRUARY 2012
What the Research Says...
A UNICEF Peer Education Fact Sheet reports that “qualitative evaluations of school-based peer education have
shown that:
• Young people appreciate and are influenced in positive ways by a peer-led intervention if it is well-
designed and properly supervised;
• Serving as a peer educator provides a challenging,
rewarding opportunity to young people to develop “My participation in
their leadership skills, gain the respect of their peers, Empower has helped me by
and improve their own knowledge base and skills. “allowing me to realize my
Peer educators often change their own behaviour voice is worth hearing.’”
after becoming a peer educator;
—Empower Youth Participant
• It can foster fulfilling relationships between teachers
and students;
• It can give girls legitimacy to talk about sex without the risk of being stigmatized as sexually
promiscuous (particularly when peer led activities take place in single-sex groups);
• Peer educators can provide a valuable link to health services;
• Peer education has had a positive effect on reported attitudes toward persons living with HIV/AIDS;
• Peer educators have shown in some cases to be more effective than adults in establishing norms and in
changing attitudes related to sexual behaviour. However, they are not necessarily better in transmitting
factual health information. Peer educators and adult-led education can thus complement each other.
One study showed that a mixture of classroom-based and peer-led education is more effective than one
or the other in isolation. The combined condition showed the greatest gains in information, motivation,
behavioural skills and behaviour.

Unicef. “Peer Education Fact Sheet.”. Accessed on March 15 2012. http://www.unicef.org/lifeskills/index_12078.html

What we say...
“Most HIV workshops are not led by youth. This
is really important—we need HIV and sexual
health workshops run by people we can relate to.
Conventional models are often rooted in a medical
model of education. Many youth (including many
of us) have had negative experiences with the
‘medical industry’ and would rather learn about
HIV, sexual health, and our bodies from our peers
rather than a public health nurse. It often seems
like the person facilitating the workshop doesn’t
care about our lives, or understand the issues we
face. They act as if having safe sex is easy—but
they don’t understand that issues like poverty,
homophobia, and racism often get in the way. Not
only are workshops run by youth, they are also run
by people who share similar experiences as people
FEBRUARY 2012
in the audience. After all, ‘youth’ is a super broad category. When possible we try to ensure there is shared
experience between peer educators and youth workshop participants.”

“Conventional HIV prevention models promote fear and judgment. Most conventional workshops promote sex
negative attitudes and judgment which can shut down the conversation and decrease participants’ willingness
to ask questions. Judgment can also lead to even more trauma if someone is triggered. For example, for those of
us who have been involved in sex work, we have been fearful of speaking up in workshops because we are afraid
that we will be judged, or that someone will try to ‘save us’ or talk to the police. Similarly, many of us have
also been in conventional HIV/sexual health workshops where we have been made to feel bad about our sexual
orientation or genders. In our workshops, our fun arts-based, judgment-free and sex-positive activities do the
opposite: they open up the conversation leading to lots of question asking and dialogue. Also, because of the
role trauma has played out in our own lives, we are very sensitive to creating safe and inclusive spaces.”

“Conventional workshops only focus on HIV as if it only exists in a science lab. HIV isn’t just a biological virus—
it is a disease which prays on larger social determinants of health. Our workshops explore the way issues like
poverty, homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, HIV stigma, immigration and colonialism affect our bodies
and the choices we can or cannot make.”

Peer Education in Action


This discussion guide is intended for peer educators to foster a sense of self-reflexivity around peer education.
This could be through praise, constructive criticism, ideas about programming or creating supportive spaces.
These are questions that participants can answer individually, or in a group.
• What are the advantages of having peers talk about HIV/AIDS and sexual health?
• How does having peers talk about HIV/
AIDS and sex differ from a doctor, nurse or
school teacher?
• What are problems that might come up
when talking about HIV/AIDS or sexual
health with your peers (e.g. privacy issues/
disclosure; confidentiality; shared friend
groups or intimate partners, etc.)?
• How can peer educators make the group
feel safer and included when discussing
HIV/AIDS and sex (e.g. creating group
policies, taking turns in leading activities,
talking about self-care)?
• What kind of changes do you want to see
in your community around HIV/AIDS? What
support will you need from your peers to
see/make these changes happen?

FEBRUARY 2012
Need Some Inspiration? 
Check out Empower: Youth, Arts, and Activism—An HIV/AIDS Arts Activism Manual for Youth by Youth. This
manual showcases creative ways to do peer-to-peer education in captivating ways that are youth lead. Also,
consider surfing over to our website at www.empoweryouth.info, where you can order the above manual, check
out all of the amazing training’s we have been receiving in the arts, harm reduction, and facilitation. You can
even request our energetic crew to come and do an engaging artistic workshop on HIV for your group. 

For a rad, interactive and multifaceted online resource check out www.youthpeer.org. Here you can find an
interactive FAQ section, an online certification tool in peer education, standards for peer education programs,
evaluation tools, and train the trainer information. For any thespians out there, this site even has an extensive
resource on incorporating the dramatic arts into your programing. Each resource is available in many languages.
Worth a click!

T.E.A.C.H.’ s clever accronym stands for Teens Educating and Confronting Homophobia. They can be found
online and in person at Planned Parenthood Toronto, in the city’s downtown core. While T.E.A.C.H. focuses
on breaking-down transphobia, homophobia, and heterosexism, the Positive Youth Power Project, another peer
based project at PPT, focuses on HIV education, including some Hep C info. Check out www.PPT.on.ca for the
best of both of these peer education programs and so much more!

This bulletin was written by Mason McColl, Andii Bykes, and Kamilah Apong, February 2012.

For more information please contact Sarah Switzer,


Empower Project Coordinator at SSwitzer@ctchc.com or check us out online at www.empoweryouth.info.

This project was generously funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation.


The Ontario Trillium Foundation is an agency of the Government of Ontario.

FEBRUARY 2012

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