 Our local PEERS Project Program (Peers Educating and Encouraging Relationship Skills) is a n extension of a nation-wide expansion of an "abstinence-until-marriage," peer-facilitated and preventative health model program. It is funded by a grant from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The PEERS Project originated in 1994 when St. Vincent Hospitals and Health Services in Indianapolis developed an abstinence education program that empowers positive high school-age role models to speak to peers.
The key to the success of such a program is to identify and train junior and senior high school students who are positive examples because they have chosen to abstain from sexual involvement before marriage and are committed to a drug free life. Many adolescents and teens will respond to their messages, because they are an older peer who "knows what they are talking about." They present several sessions a year to peers in health classes, encouraging them to make healthy life decisions by providing them the information and confidence to do so.
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