Jan. 24, 2009 — College students from St. Thomas and St. Croix got a crash course Friday on the do’s and don’ts of peer educating, and picked up some helpful tips on how to effectively engage and teach their fellow students about HIV/AIDS, hepatitis and substance abuse.
Four years ago, Doris Battiste, UVI’s associate administrator for student affairs, received a grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to begin training students as peer educators. Using the $85,000 she receives each year for the program, Battiste pulls in experts from both the territory and beyond to teach the group about each particular disease, and show them how to pass that information on to others.
The students — about 11 on St. Croix and 15 on St. Thomas — conduct workshops throughout both University of the Virgin Islands campuses during the year, taking over both certain freshman and sophomore classes, residence halls and other community areas, Battiste said. Students in the program receive some form of content training every month — including a two-day seminar that started on St. Thomas Friday that taught them how to hone their skills and knowledge in an effort to become better facilitators.
“The students, primarily sophomores, juniors and seniors, are required to make a minimum of three classroom or residence hall presentations and get involved in at least one community outreach project each semester,” Battiste said. “They teach their peers about the risk factors and also how to protect themselves.”
Dana Williams and Calvin Sprinks from the Community Wellness Project in St. Louis, Mo. are leading the two-day seminar, which focused Friday morning on the four stages of conducting group workshops. Students discussed how to set guidelines, get organized, be creative when teaching and create a “safe space” for their peers.
“The facilitator’s role is to create a safe space — that means smiling at the other students, making eye contact, and making sure that they know we’re not there to judge them,” one student said. “We are there to relate to them and help them to learn something.”
The students also talked about conflict resolution, prevention and what it takes to teach others how to be “productive” leaders.
“The bulk of the students here have had a lot of previous experience with this kind of stuff — we’re pretty impressed,” Williams said before the group broke for lunch. “So what we’re trying to do is build on what they’ve learned and get them to try to focus on what their individual skills sets are and how they can use them to engage their peers and other diverse populations. So far it’s going really well — they’re doing excellent.”
The two-day training is sponsored by the Office of the Associate Campus Administrator on St. Thomas and supported by a grant from SAMHSA's Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, through McFarland and Associates, Inc. of Maryland.
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