Peer Helping

Peer pressure is too often a bad thing, however, positive peer pressure or peer influence can also be an effective prevention tool. The positive use of peers is also known as peer resource utilization and typically refers to programs that use children and youth to work and/or help other children and youth. Included in this definition are programs such as youth service, cooperative learning, peer leadership and youth involvement.

The National Peer Helping Association, based in North Carolina is an excellent resource for identifying effective strategies for positive engaging youth as peer helpers. These strategies include:

Bonnie Benard also offers this analysis on the promise of peer programs in prevention

"...the critical need for the prevention and education fields to change the framework from which they often view youth - to see children and youth not as problems which need to be fixed but as resources who can contribute to their families, schools, and communities. ...what has become increasingly clear to me this last year is the need for children to experience themselves as resources from early childhood on. This means youth service must be a concept we infuse throughout our schools from the preschool level forward. (Peer Programs Hold Promise for Prevention, Bonnie Benard, Turning the corner from risk to resiliency, Western Center News, December. 1990)

"Developing peer programming throughout the life cycle - self-help groups, mutual aid groups, for neighbor natural helpers, inter-generational programs, etc. - should be a major focus of prevention policy and programming." (Peer Programs Hold Promise for Prevention, Bonnie Benard, Turning the corner from risk to resiliency, Western Center News, December. 1990)

"Would you eat rat poison? Do you smoke? The questions are more related than you might think. ...We are two of 18 Stewart Middle School students trained to present information like that - and how tobacco affects the human body. We teach to fourth and fifth-grade classrooms, traveling in groups of three to four students. ...The most frequent asked question is, ‘Is tobacco found in marijuana and coffee?’ ...The two staff members at Stewart Middle School responsible for this program are Mila Schneider, a sixth-grade teacher, and Joe Raniero, our seventh-grade counselor." (Teaming up against tobacco/18 Tacoma students learn how to persuade peers to stop smoking - or never start, The News Tribune, February 28, 1998)

"The Madison STARS pledge reads: ‘We pledge to remain drug and alcohol free and refrain from the use of violence for the remainder of the school year." ...The STARS core team, or ‘Students Taking a Right Stand,’ not only promotes the pledge within the school, but takes their positive message out into the community. The service club members inform elementary-school students about substance abuse, research the effects of drugs, coordinate food and gift drives, for low income-families and perform dramatic presentations for classmates on the dangers of drugs. Team members earn points for every project they participate in. Those with 300 or more points at the end of the year attend a special party at Wild Waves water park in Federal Way. (STARS helps students shine by avoiding drugs, violence, West Seattle Herald, November 26, 1997)

"Blaine - Students can play a lead role in helping classmates to avoid and come clean from alcohol and drugs said Kirke Mahy, the new drug counselor for Blaine schools. ...wants to help students form a ‘crisis response team’ to assist other students, help parents and community members form a group to support troubled kids, and help students form a school group that could, for example, organize drug activities." (Counselor wants kids to help kids stay off drugs, Bellingham Herald, October 19, 1997)