Peer Education Systems- Goals

A systems approach is necessary for peer education to truly be effective. By a peer education system we mean a consciously constructed web that is both geographic and cross-sector (e.g., the different kinds of groups and organizations doing peer education within a school district or province) and institutional (the churches and schools in a diocese, or all of the prisons in a correctional system). The broader a system is, the more varied the kinds of programs and sub-systems within it, and the more comprehensive and sustainable its reach.

The goals of system-building for peer education include:

• Common standards of practice agreed to be important for effectiveness
• A single management information system that programs contribute to, that is centrally maintained, and whose information is periodically fed back to the programs
• Mechanisms to ensure that programs provide mutual support and advice, share and compare materials and approaches, and grow towards improvement
• A stable capacity to provide quality training and ongoing technical assistance to programs as they evolve and expand, and as staff turn over;
• A credentialing system that guarantees that high performance standards are set and met, and that peer educators and supervisors who meet those standards are recognized as having acquired skills transferable to higher education and the workplace
• Basing funding on programs' abilities to meet or exceed minimum standards and document program outputs and population outcomes