Counselling skills for peer educators

Life in college is not all that rosy as most young people speculate. It has many challenges.

THESE challenges call for a need to have peer educators within the college campus as an integral part in assisting other students and make college life more bearable.

Peer education is defined as an approach to health promotion, in which community members are supported to promote health- enhancing change among their peers.

It is also defined as the teaching or sharing of health information, values and behaviour in educating others who may share similar social backgrounds or life experiences.

In a nutshell, peer education can be described as learning from one’s peers. It is the process of sharing information among members of a specific community or group of young people to achieve positive outcomes for health and well- being.

It is a fact that people of all ages can learn well from their peers. Young adults can have more confidence in their peers than adults. This calls for those who opted to be peer educators to have correct information to cascade to their peers and more importantly have basic counselling skills to be more effective in dealing with their peers.

Peer educators and staff members from Nyadire Teachers College went through a three- day training in basic counselling skills which was conducted by Zoe Counselling and Training Centre Trust within the college campus.

Topics covered included qualities of an effective counsellor, counselling techniques, self awareness, stages of counselling and the systemic approach to counselling.

After the three- day training all the participants were awarded certificates and the coordinator of Health and Life Styles department Mr Dhubuya was so grateful for the training as he said that it was going to be of great help to the peer edu- cators and all students in the college.

Rumbidzai Mazhou a participant said that she was so grateful to have acquired such skills as a peer educator and recommended that it was supposed to be taken to all peer educators since only a small proportion had been trained.

Mrs Rinemhota who spoke on behalf of the college principal thanked Zoe Trust for a job well done and encouraged the participants to go and show the light in schools, college and communities and that their conduct was going to improve and show positive conduct.