Wayne Townsend has initiated a peer program at Grand River Collegiate in Kitchener, Ontario and has developed a manual on helping schools to establish peer tutoring programs. WayneÕs manual is available through Brownlee Publishing, Box 37030, Kitchener, Ontario, N2A 4A7. Wayne provides a series of 10 different workshops aimed at helping teachers and other human resources workers improve their team building, teaching, counselling, and consulting. For more information call Wayne at (519) 745-8543.

Youth Care Worker, Jane Verhiel (Ron Brent Elementary School, 1401 - 17th Avenue, Prince George, B.C., V2L 3Z2) has been using our training manuals to establish peer programs for grades 5, 6, and 7 students. Students learn communication skills and use them in conflict resolution and mediation sessions set by the school counsellor. Jane and another counsellor from an inner city elementary school have created a Peer Helper Club which has become very popular. Jane reports that students who tended to show negative or bullying behaviour on the playground have decided that it is actually "cool to care" about others and have made application to join the Club. The Peer Helpers have become student role models and have contributed significantly to a change in the climate of the whole school. The success of the peer program was validated in presentations the students made to university classes at Northern British Columbia University and a satellite campus in Prince George of Simon Fraser University.

Distance education has been expanding rapidly across Canada, and Bruce Abel, a Level II Nationally Certified Peer Trainer, wanted to examine the role that peer helpers could play in distance learning. While a counsellor at Centennial Collegiate (289 College Avenue, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1S9), Bruce completed his M.S. degree at the University of Guelph with a ground-breaking research paper on the use of peer helpers in distance education learner support systems. Among the roles that Bruce identified for peer helpers to play in distance education were augmenting current support services, humanizing the impersonal nature of distance work, and helping learners develop autonomy.

Peer program leaders have often commented on the positive impact peer helper experiences have on the peer helpers themselves. But does such experience benefit students when they leave their official peer helper roles? Laura Grenda, a counsellor at K.L.O. Secondary School (3130 Gordon Drive, Kelowna, British Columbia, V1Y 3K9), successfully completed her masterÕs in counselling at the University of Victoria with a project that examined the degree to which peer counselling was useful to former secondary school peer counsellors.

Laura found that virtually every aspect of her peer program, including the interview and selection process, the skills learned in training, and the experience of working with challenging problems were described as valuable by former peer counsellors. Increased self-esteem in work settings, confidence in dealing with job interviews, enhanced professional and personal relationships, working cooperatively, and efficiently organizing tasks in the workplace were all considered by the former peer counsellors as qualities they learned as a result of their secondary school peer experience.

Carol Stuart completed her doctoral work at the University of Victoria (Faculty of Child & Youth Care, Box 1700, Victoria, British Columbia, V8W 2Y2) in late 1994 after successfully defending her dissertation: A Study of Adolescents' Reflections on Life Events during Training to be Peer Helpers. Dr. Stuart found that opportunities for personal reflection are essential for effective peer training and such opportunities are strengthened when there is trust, a support network, and a healthy tension between personal development and the development of helping skills. A key finding of her study was the degree to which the experiential training model assists peer helpers to move beyond self-disclosure regarding their own experiences and into gaining wisdom from such disclosure so that they can then use their own experiences to formulate action plans for helping others.

While peer helpers are typically highly commited to assisting students in their own schools, many students have expressed an interest in connecting with peer helpers in other schools. Lisa Cheney, the coordinator of the Mentor/Tutor program at Fundy High School (Box 60, St. George, New Brunswick, E0G 2Y0) has a number of keen and eager peer helping students who would like to become pen pals with other peer helpers. Contact Lisa directly at her school if there are other peer helpers who can start this connection.

Susan Dennison, a specialist in counselling programs for children at-risk is preparing a peer helper program that will incorporate many of her already developed training materials. Susan has written three books for working with children in therapy groups and they all contain practical techniques and activities. She has also written a similar book for working with adolescents and a book full of activities for working with at-risk children. She can be contacted at 321 Camelot Drive, Salisbury, North Carolina, 28144, (704) 633-1886. If you mention "great chocolates", she will know you read about her in this Journal.

Several school districts in Canada hold local peer helping conferences. In British Columbia school counsellor Lawrie Chubb brought together three schools from the Howe Sound School District and eight schools from the Surrey School District. Students conducted workshops on their basic training, elementary school outreach services, peer help lines, peer education, self-esteem, drug prevention, anger management, and eating disorders. The conference was another part of the on-going support and consultation for peer education provided by Lawrie and co-consultant Sherril Berg. The team plans to continue retreat style conferences and in 1996 will hold their third "Drugs and Dropouts" conference. Sherril can be contacted at 1757 - 137A Street, Surrey, B.C., V4A 9E6.

Gail Roberts, the author of the best-selling, Peer Counsellor's Workbook, reports that the Prince George School District Career Education Specialist Association has formed a partnership with Human Resources Canada. Peer employment counsellors have been jointly trained and liaise between the Hire-A-Student Office and the senior high schools in the district. Two peer employment counsellors at each school maintain and update a job posting board with the help of daily faxes from the Hire-A-Student Centre. The peer employment counsellors also help other students with resume writing and answer general questions about seeking employment. Many of the peer employment counsellors use the time they spend on the project as credit toward the 30 hour work experience component, required as part of B.C.'s new Career and Personal Planning Curriculum. For more information contact Gail at Kelly Road Secondary School, 4540 Handlen Road, Prince George, B.C., V2K 2J8.

From South Australia, we received a series of articles on school bullying written by Phillip Slee (The Flinders University of South Australia, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, Australia). Professor Slee is familiar with our work in peer counselling and his research provides a strong foundation for helping children improve their relationships with peers. According to Professor Slee's research, bullies, although they may appear to dominate and control others, are often unhappy and depressed children who dislike school and have difficulty establishing satisfying social relationships with others. The practical implications of Professor Slee's work have been captured in a video discussion package, Stressed Out & Growing Up which can be ordered directly from its author. Dr. Slee will be travelling to Calgary, Alberta for a six month study tour in the latter half of 1996.

Selkirk College in Castlegar, British Columbia (Box 1200, Castlegar, B.C., V1N 3J7), now has a peer support program thanks to the efforts of Eleanor Elstone, who just recently graduated from the CollegeÕs social service worker program. Peer support workers receive communication skill training, learning assistance information, advice from the College sexual harassment officer, and assistance from the student council ombudsman. While the peer program started slowly, the volunteers now see about five drop-in contacts a day. The volunteers listen, help with action plans, and assist students to find appropriate community resources.

Paula Lancaster, Project Coordinator for the Association of New Canadians HIV/AIDS Education Program (Box 2031, St. John's, Newfoundland, A1C 5R6), has selected peer education as the channel to provide newcomers to Canada with culture and language sensitive HIV/AIDS information. She expects that the project will serve as a base for other Atlantic provinces.

Anyone familiar with using peer helpers in residential settings is encouraged to contact Rene Tremblay, Youth Worker with the O'Leary Regional Service Centre (Box 8, OÕLeary, Prince Edward Island, C0B 1V0). Rene wants to assess the value of starting a peer helping program in a secure custody centre for young offenders.

Mary Callahan, Drug and Alcohol Educator with the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, has established a peer education program and sent us a copy of her program brochure which explains peer educator roles, qualifications, training, duties, benefits, and services.

Deborah Hardwick of the Peer Education Group for the City of Toronto Department of Public Health (6th Floor East Tower, City Hall, Toronto, Ontario, M5H 2N2) e-mailed us that she and colleague Siu Fong have completed their in-house report on youth-to-youth sexual education programs. She has prepared two articles for publication. One article is based on their review and analysis of evaluation studies and the second article presents their findings regarding the various peer programs associated with sexual health.

Nationally Certified Level III Training Consultant Diane Eckler, was invited to speak about peer helping to the International Symposium on Fostering Resilient Children sponsored by Health Canada and the Canadian Association for School Health. Diane brought along five peer helpers from her Unionville High School peer program. While Diane's comments were well received, the students were a highlight of the event. Symposium organizers were impressed with how articulate the students were in discussing their roles in working with peers, the impact peer work has had on their own growth, and the skills and competencies the students had gained as a result of the peer helping experience. The students were living examples of resiliency and were strong advocates for the value of peer helping as a way to foster resilience in young people.

If you have retired and are considering a career as a peer trainer contact Muriel Wilde (155 High Street, Collingwood, Ontario, L9Y 3Y9). Muriel is a retired elementary school principal who has been asked to motivate and train high school students as peer tutors. She has 40 students and is relying on her reading, videos, and intuition. She is eager to receive materials from other peer tutor program leaders.

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