Coordinators & Schools
The PEERS Project Curriculum
In order to empower positive teenage role models, The PEERS Project developed a peer-facilitated, abstinence education program in 1994 entitled Peers Educating Peers About Positive Values© (PEP). St. Vincent Hospitals and Health Services in Indianapolis, Indiana, underwrote this proactive intervention's school-based program, and the Indiana State Department of Health's R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Initiative funded its community-based program from 1998-2001 until it received its first of two federal grants from the the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The PEP program includes research-based, scripted lessons for peer mentors, original video vignettes, and interactive games and discussions.
The PEERS Project's Director Eve Jackson trains adults to work with high school students who have been selected because they have abstained from premarital sexual involvement and drugs. One hundred peer mentors in 1994 snowballed into more than 13,000 throughout Indiana by 2006, demonstrating the effectiveness of this peer-facilitated approach among adolescents.
School-based Program Topics:
(40-minute sessions for middle school and 50-minute sessions for high school)
Level 1 (Sixth Grade)
- Media Influences
- Teen Pregnancy and Parenthood
- Assertiveness Techniques
Level 2 (Seventh Grade)
- Friendship and Peer Pressure
- Sexually Transmitted Disease
- Linking Drugs to Sex
Level 3 (Eighth Grade)
- What Love Really Is
- Healthy Relationships
- Learning to Love
Level 4 (High School)
- Smart Love
- STDs: The Choice is Yours (video only)
- Love That Lasts a Lifetime
Community-Based Program Topics:
(8 fast-paced, one-hour sessions in English and Spanish)
- Media Influences
- Sexually Transmitted Diseases
- Teen Pregnancy and Parenthood
- Assertiveness Techniques
- Linking Drugs to Sex
- What Love Really Is
- Smart Love
- Learning to Love
More Praise for The Peers Project Curriculum
"The agency's partnership with The PEERS Project has been very beneficial to our youth. My associates and I are pleased with the program's interactive material and its peer role models. Both are making a positive impact on our kids."
-- Robert M. Jackson, Jr.
Manager, Resident Services
HUD/IHA
"As a director of an at-risk female outreach program, I see how The PEERS Project's abstinence education had helped the girls who live in public housing address teen issues and problems of teen pregnancy. Our local teens need this training to spread the abstinence message in our community."
-- Karen L. Ragland, Director
Diamonds Female Program
YMCA of Southwestern Indiana
