PEER EDUCATION

Peer education is widely recognized as a useful and credible way to reach young people with important information. It is a process whereby well-trained and motivated young people undertake informal or organized educational activities with their peers over a period of time, aimed at developing their knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and skills and enabling them to be responsible for and protect their own health and those of their peers.

Peer education can take place in small groups or through individual contact and in a variety of settings: in schools and universities, clubs, churches, workplaces, on the street or in a shelter, or wherever young people gather. Peer education uses volunteer members of a given group to effect changes among other members of the same group which stimulates collective action, which in turn results into positive outcome within the group and in communities.