One of the mantras of our work at YOURS is based on the belief that young people of a similar age, background, interests and social identities can influence each other in positive ways. This approach to social health education is called ‘peer education’ and is a key proponent of our work. Read about the power of peer education in the example of Kenyan young people taking the lead in their own road safety workshops.
Peer education is powerful tool that has been embraced in life saving education programs the world over. One of the most profound examples in recent times has been the promotion of young people as ‘educators’ to their peers in the prevention of HIV Aids run by UNICEF.
Peer education is based on the reality that many people make changes not only based on what they know, but on the opinions and actions of their close, trusted peers. Peer educators can communicate and understand in a way that the best-intentioned adults can’t, and can serve as role models for change. Peer educators can help raise awareness, provide accurate information, and help their classmates develop skills to change behavior. – UNICEF
Translating this approach to road safety has also illustrated the groundbreaking strides that peer education can make. Most recently, our Training of Facilitators, a two-week intensive program that was undertaken from 26th November-6th December 2012 in Nairobi, Kenya put road safety peer education to the test.
After undergoing an intensive week of road safety theory through brain friendly, interactive learning workshops, our 11 facilitators from across Kenya became skilled in their topic of interest; preventing road crashes amongst their peers, loved ones and communities. The training equipped the young people with the skills needed to understand the road safety crisis in Kenya and steps needed to challenge the current status.
Facilitators wearing the ‘traffic light logo t-shirts’ connect with their local peers.
In the second week of the training, the practical element, YOURS staff undertook a demonstration workshop with local young people from Nairobi at the Kenya Red Cross, the purpose of which was to enable the facilitators to watch and observe the concepts of learning in practice with a relatively uninformed group of young people; uninformed in the case of road safety. On observation, the participants were receptive, eager to learn and engaged well in the training session, however, when the facilitators (all Kenya born and bred) took the reigns for their own sessions with another group of young people, the results were remarkable.
It is here that the power of peer education took its own dimension. The facilitators interacted with their peers, those of similar, background, interests and social expectations, in a way that our demonstration workshops clearly lacked. The ability of Kenya based facilitators interacting with their own ‘real’ peers manifested in an interaction between the peers in powerful demonstration of cohesion. The facilitators were able to draw upon local examples that struck chords with the participants; they were able to offer explanations in the local Kiswahilli language, engage the group in educative games sensitive to social expectations and connected with the group in a way that no other young people from any other country would be able to connect.
The facilitators designed their sessions in their own unique style engaging their peers in a local context.
In other words, local young people educating local young people; their peers, was more profound in transmitting a message than I could ever have imagined. On reflection of pre and post evaluation questionnaires (used to map attitude change in the young participants) there results were indicative of the power of peer education in changing attitudes. All participants who answered in the pre-workshop questionnaires a ‘lack in knowledge on a road safety topic’ showed that they had learned a lot in short period of time as noted in their ‘post-workshop questionnaire’. Some participants even stated that they would always wear a helmet on two wheels and will encourage all their friends to do the same because of its importance.
While peer education does have its limitations in the sense of assessing long term attitude and behavior change, what is clear is that skilled young people educating their peers is a very strong approach in transmitting messages of safety to young people; a group who is particularly difficult to reach in terms of public safety messages. This approach, however, does only focuses on one aspect of the road safety system; that of awareness and education, however, if peer education is coupled with adequate road safety laws, enforcement, good road safety infrastructure and safer vehicles, strides could be made for road safety in Africa. This is why our program equipped our facilitators to also become advocates for road safety, calling for better road safety on all levels.
The dynamism of the young Kenyan people was harnessed in the facilitators’ own workshops.
Through follow-up with the facilitators and the participants of the workshops, we will map whether the group still hold the same attitudes towards road safety as they did at the end of the workshops. If young people, passionate about road safety can continue to convince their peers on the importance of being safe on the road, we can create a generation of safety conscious young people that include road safety in their agendas for decades to come. One day, road traffic crashes will cease to be the biggest killer of young people because young people themselves took action to change these statistics.