Peer Educators working at the LetsStopAIDS Headquarters Office designing the P2P workshops.

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Details

Workshops Designed for Youth by Youth

Launch Year

2005

Intersecting youth leadership and knowledge exchange between peers

Peer to Peer is a LetsStopAIDS initiative that intersects knowledge exchange and youth leadership.

The programme was created by youth to provide their peers with a stigma-free environment where they have access to information related to sexual health and navigating relationships, that is relevant to their experiences.

When speaking with youth about what they are taught in sex-ed, they share there is a disconnect between what is discussed in the classroom vs. real life experiences. LetsStopAIDS believes that youth need to be at the centre of conversations around programme development to close the gap. That is why peer educators have been at the heart of the programme curation, design, and execution.

The mission is to fill the gap in the curriculum to empower youth to make decisions that are right for them. LetsStopAIDS has been running Peer to Peer programming in schools, universities, and community organizations based in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and we plan to expand nationwide by 2025.

Peer to Peer journey

Student filling out a worksheet from the P2P workshop activity learning about HIV and STBBIs

The Problem

For over two decades, LetsStopAIDS has strived to uncover the barriers standing in the way of effective HIV & STI knowledge amongst Canadian Youth. We discovered that the conventional student-teacher framework was not the most effective form of communication for addressing these sensitive topics in the classroom, and as a result, teachers and students felt apprehensive discussing important aspects of HIV and STIs. This apprehension, combined with the rising rates of STIs and HIV infections, suggested that something had to be done.

Group of students collaborating on the P2P workshop activities

By Youth, For Youth

We decided to develop Peer (to peer) workshops – a gamified, interactive space designed to disrupt the conventional student-teacher framework and increase access to relevant sexual information for Canadian youth. The core concept of P2P revolves around this idea of “By Youth, For Youth”: we wanted to provide youth an opportunity to actively engage as leaders in HIV awareness, while also acting as an effective medium for connecting with their peers.