About PEERS

Why It works

Youth engagement—promoting youth as problem solvers, rather than just the problem—has proven to be more effective than problem prevention models in galvanizing commitments from adolescents.

Therefore, the heart of The PEERS Project’s intervention is its teenage mentors, and PEERS’ primary goal is to invest in young leaders through adult mentoring, character-based education, peer support, and a coordinated, progressive series of activities and experiences. Best practices leadership development models produce favorable outcomes because people thrive when they are given constructive opportunities to make contributions to others. When people are valued and motivated, they rise to higher levels of leadership.

According to Search Institute, “Active involvement in community service helps teenagers develop assets, internalize strong values that guide their choices, acquire skills and competencies that equip them to make positive choices, and gain a strong sense of their own power, purpose, worth and promise.” In addition, peer educators remember 90 percent of what they teach and demonstrate, compared to only 5 to 15 percent of what they hear (Edgar Dale’s Cone of Learning Theory).

Young people typically make choices in order to be accepted by others. Program participants are emboldened by PEERS mentors’ positive peer pressure. Its evaluation by Dr. Kenneth Ferraro at Purdue University from 2002 through 2006 indicates that the mentors’ instruction and example influenced most of the participants’ decision to remain committed to abstain from premarital sexual activity. At the end of 8th grade after receiving three years of the PEP program, more than 8 out of 10 students were committed to save sex for marriage.