Peer Education
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Typically, the term "peer educator" refers to someone who shares characteristics of his or her peers but receives special training to function in a different way. This issue of The Soul Beat offers summaries of programme experiences, strategic thinking documents and materials from the Soul Beat website related to the use of peer education to address diverse issues such as reproductive health, HIV and AIDS, and human rights.
If you would like your organisation's communication work or research and resource documents to be featured on the Soul Beat Africa website and in The Soul Beat newsletters, please contact the Editor - Anja Venth aventh@comminit.com
To subscribe to The Soul Beat go to http://www.comminit.com/africa/soul-beat-subscribe.html or email Seipati Fountain sfountain@comminit.com
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1. GOLD Peer Education Development Agency - Botswana, South Africa
This non-profit organisation advocates for behaviour change amongst youth in Botswana and South Africa through peer education. Established in 2004, GOLD stands for Generation of Leaders Discovered. Their primary strategy is the cross-cultural GOLD Peer Education Model, which aims to equip youth development organisations to effect behaviour change. Directed at youth leadership in HIV/AIDS prevention, the model aims to enhance and strengthen life-orientation curriculum within classrooms. It emphasises the establishment of relationships among community stakeholders including schools, clinics, churches, community-based organisations and the police.
Contact GOLD info@goldpe.org.za
2. Youth-to-Youth - Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda
Initiated by the German Foundation for World Population (DSW) in 1999, the Youth-to-Youth, or Y2Y Initiative, is a multi-faceted programme designed to improve the sexual and reproductive health of young people by young people. Although the specific implementation of activities varies from country to country, the general activities include establishing and strengthening youth clubs or peer groups, providing mass information, education and communication (IEC) on sexual and reproductive health, and providing sexual and reproductive health services. The Youth-to-Youth programme was developed based on the premise that awareness-raising works best when young people are informed by their peers.
Contact Alexandra Müller alexandra.mueller@dsw-hannover.de
3. Jali Watoto (Care for Children) Anti-Stigma and Discrimination Campaign - Tanzania
Launched in 2006, this project was designed to support community-based HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and support activities with vulnerable children in Tanzania, especially those affected by HIV/AIDS. The programme's focus was training and educating young people and involved workshops for children and youth to raise awareness on different topics to promote peaceful communities, healthy environments and reasons for positive living. The programme trained young people to be peer educators, providing them with skills, techniques, resources and messages to teach youth and children about HIV/AIDS. The organisers believe children are great communicators: "We know that the anti-stigma messages that are given to our young people will be spread to their families, their friends and throughout the community."
Contact Pact pact@pacthq.org
4. Never Again - Rwanda
Launched in 2002, Never Again Rwanda works to sensitise and engage young Rwandans about peace through creative education such as theatre, music, dance and sports in school clubs. Part of the international Never Again initiative, the Rwandan organisation is run locally by volunteer staff with the aim of advancing a peaceful society and world. Youth clubs in secondary schools aim to give space to both youth of families who participated in the genocide, and survivors. The clubs aim to support the psychological needs of traumatised youth and hope to create a safe and open forum to discuss sensitive issues, such as ethnicity, social prejudice and the genocide.
Contact Joseph Nkurunziza info@neveragainrwanda.org
5. Drive Protected - Ghana
This initiative aims to reach out to mobile populations at high risk of contracting and passing on HIV/AIDS by sharing information through a peer education network. The project organisers selected 6 transport stations where 187 peer educators were recruited and trained. The educators were provided with a 2-day training on topics including anatomy and physiology of the male and female reproductive systems, STIs, HIV/AIDS, condom usage, and peer education and communication skills. To facilitate the work of the peer educators, each was given a peer educator toolkit. The peer educators were responsible for educating their peers by: organising and engaging in bus talks; giving talks on HIV/AIDS during their branch meetings; assisting in the organisation of durbars, quiz competitions, and film shows; branding the transport stations with Drive Protected stickers and posters; and reporting on their activities and progress.
Contact Mabel Tsibu-Nyarko mtnyarko@gsmf.com.gh
6. World Starts With Me (WSWM) - Uganda
Launched in 2003 by the World Population Foundation (WPF), this project is a web-based/CD-ROM curriculum on information technology (IT) and sexual and reproductive health and rights for young people in Uganda. It was designed to be used in secondary schools and out-of-school facilities such as telecentres, libraries, and computer-training and youth centres - in a student-facilitator situation. Crafted to be youth-friendly, the programme also aims to be friendly to teachers, giving them access to the materials and instructions (e.g., information on sexuality and sexual health), as well as offer assistance to peer educators. There are 14 lessons, whose learning objectives, assignments, ice breakers, presentations, games, tools, guidelines, and stories are all available in a student version and a separate teacher version.
Contact Jo Reinders wswm@wpf.org
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TOPICS FOR SOUL BEAT NEWSLETTERS IN 2008
We are planning our newsletter content for 2008. As we are now going out weekly instead of every second week, we have a lot of newsletters to plan for the coming year. Please let us know if there are any topics you would like us to cover.
You can contact the Director Titus Moetsabi tmoetsabi@comminit.com or the Editor Anja Venth aventh@comminit.com
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7. Reducing the Transmission of HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections in a Mining Community
by Lewis Ndhlovu, Catherine Searle, Johannes van Dam, Yodwa Mzaidume, Bareng Rasego, and Solly Moema
This 46-page evaluation describes the Mothusimpilo (“working together for health”) Intervention Project (MIP), which drew upon information, education, and communication (IEC) activities to reduce the community prevalence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and the incidence of HIV infection. The interventions, which focused primarily on female sex workers and male mine workers, involved 3 primary components: peer education on HIV/STI knowledge and prevention; free condom promotion and distribution by peer educators; and efforts to strengthen STI services at private and public health facilities through the training of service providers in STI case management.
8. Farmer Field Schools and the Future of Agricultural Extension in Africa
by Brent M. Simpson and Michelle Owens
This study provides an overview of the introduction of the Farmer Field School (FFS) approach to Africa. Case study materials highlight some of the successes achieved and difficulties encountered in the expanding use of the approach. According to the authors, the FFS approach - pioneered and developed into a successful model of agricultural development in South and Southeast Asia during the 1970s and 1980s - is a participatory agricultural extension strategy weaving together elements of adult education, agro-ecology, and local organisational development. Farmers who are trained in FFS are expected to become local change agents by initiating farmer-to-farmer transmission of information and farming techniques to accelerate the diffusion of new ideas.
9. Trust in Aunties: Testimony and Counselling Through Teenage Mothers
by Regina M. Goergen and Flavien Ndonko
This 36-page document shares the experience of the “Aunties Project” in Cameroon, an initiative to train teenage mothers through peer education. Formerly, aunts took care of the sexual education of young girls in different communities in the country, but this tradition has largely been lost. The project recruited and trained teenage mothers to give testimony on their own experiences and to give advice to other adolescents in their communities and schools to educate them about risky sexual behaviour. This document explains the approach and describes necessary steps from situation analysis to monitoring and evaluation.
10. Peer Education, Gender and the Development of Critical Consciousness: Participatory HIV Prevention by South African Youth
by Catherine Campbell and Catherine MacPhail
Drawing on results of a larger empirical study of HIV transmission and prevention among young people in Summertown, South Africa, this study evaluates the outcome of a participatory peer education programme that promoted safe sexual behaviour among youth. The authors assert that traditional gender relations constitute a key obstacle to condom use among young people. The peer-education approach is built on an assumption that successful peer education on the interlocking concepts of social identity, empowerment, and social capital would foster new gender dynamics amenable to preventive health behaviours.
11. Innovative Practices of Youth Participation in Media
by Sanjay Asthana
Published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), this 76-page report offers a range of examples from Ghana, Haiti, India, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria, Somalia, South Africa, Vietnam, and Zambia that highlight various approaches and activities created by youth using the media for social and personal development on their own terms and in their own ways. The result of his research - this book - is organised in terms of specific media and presented in the form of a series of sketches and vignettes drawn from the 12 initiatives. One insight to emerge from these studies is that youth involvement "is not a singular act: rather an active and collective process of learning. Within these social settings, young people create and develop their own perspectives and knowledge."
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Youth Peer Education Resources
For resources on working with youth, visit the Interagency Youth Working Group website
- click here.
For information specifically on peer education, use the search function.
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12. Rutanang: Peer Education
by Charles Deutsch and Sharlene Swartz
Rutanang is a set of materials as well as an approach to peer education for programmes serving youth in school, communities, and higher education settings. Rutanang's basic manual describes a set of ten multi-level standards, ranging from what programmes must have, to what they should and could have as they engage in self-reflection and growth planning. These are arranged in checklists for guiding implementation for each of three settings: schools, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and higher education.
13. Standing Up for HIV Prevention [DVD]
by Staffan Hildebrand
Shot in Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Bangkok, Lusaka, Cape Town, Gabarone, Kiev, Phnom Penh, New Delhi, Geneva, Stockholm, and Washington DC, the 10-minute film shows adolescents and peer educators spreading prevention messages through activities like street plays and group meetings. It focuses on gender relations, sex education for youth, and issues related to sexual and reproductive health and sexual rights from a prevention perspective.
14. Making a Difference - An NGO Guidebook for Facilitating the Involvement of PLWHA
by Mette Dylande, Jesper Klinte, Krestina Lund Africa
The objective of this guidebook is to provide inspiration, knowledge, and entry points to involve people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in the fight against HIV and AIDS. The four categories of stakeholder involvement for PLWHA are: implementers, decision makers/experts, intended audience, and contributing speakers. The implementation section lists possible roles for PLWHA as counsellors, treatment supporters, health care workers, NGO programme managers and project officers, peer educators, outreach workers, and monitoring implementers.
15. The 3rd National Conference on Peer Education, HIV and AIDS - June 18-20 2008 - Nairobi, Kenya
Organised by the National Organization of Peer Educators (NOPE), the theme for this year's event is "Stigma: Let's Act Now.” According to the organisers, peer education is one of the most effective ways of imparting knowledge and skills on sexuality and HIV and AIDS among different populations, as peers have the power to influence attitudes and shape the behavior of others with whom they share certain characteristics. This event seeks to address the problem of stigma and discrimination related to HIV and AIDS in Kenya, and identify tangible solutions through information exchange, while providing a platform for experience sharing.
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To view other issues of The Soul Beat newsletter that contain information on peer learning, see:
The Soul Beat - Issue #79 - Reproductive Health and Family Planning
The Soul Beat - Issue #63 - Youth Participation
To view archived editions of The Soul Beat Newsletter, please click here.
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