Instituting adolescent peer education

SERVOL (Service Volunteered for All, Trinidad and Tobago) established its Adolescent Development Programme for disadvantaged youth in 1970. In 1993, 45 Life Centres (comprising day-care for babies and toddlers and skill training centres for young men and women, effectively acting as a family substitute) were training 3,750 adolescents. Children are given basic knowledge of their country and in many cases basic skills of reading, writing and counting. They are introduced to various marketable skill areas (e.g. building trades, child-care, home economics, farming) so that they can make a final decision as to the trade they wish to learn. During this period, they are given talks on self-understanding, self awareness and spirituality. They are also helped to understand the role of the subconscious in their lives and to overcome complexes, prejudices and hang-ups they may have acquired along the way. Finally, they are exposed to an adolescent parenting programme and involve themselves with small children in the nurseries. During their subsequent skills training of up to nine months, they are also helped to develop emotionally through forming relationships adult staff members, and have frequent opportunities to be offered basic moral and spiritual guidance. On-the-job training is followed by evaluation and work to correct weaknesses in attitude, behaviour and performance.

The original idea of Child-to-Child was that older children could be encouraged to be responsible for the health and development of their younger siblings and other young children. A specific educational approach has developed which endeavours to link what children learn in health education to positive action in their daily lives. Children learn to solve problems and make decisions in the process. The Child-to-Child approach involves five step for the children: (a) understand a particular health issue; (b) find out more about this health issue in their family and community; (c) discuss the solutions to the problem; (d) take action as individuals and as a group; (e) evaluated how effective the activities have been and plan how to do better next time. Examples of health issues on which activity sheets have been prepared are "malaria", "worms", and "coughs, colds and pneumonia".