Europeer - Europe

Europeer's mission is "To support, promote and develop the quality of youth peer education initiatives in Europe focusing on HIV/STD, health, life skills and related issues. The network supports and promotes the principal that young people should serve as a pillar in the development of health policies and programmes that effect them. In addition, the network views peer education as a methodology that can develop, strengthen and empower young people to take an active role in influencing policies and programmes. While doing so the network recognises, reflects upon and respects the social and cultural diversity of Europe."

The Europeer portal is the key tool for pursuing this mission. People involved in the peer education field are urged to use and provide various resources, such as interviews and project descriptions. On the site, users may access a youth AIDS peer education project database, download the "European guidelines for youth AIDS peer education" in 8 languages, search a bibliography of youth peer education literature, and interact with peers and colleagues through various features. The site is designed to facilitate the exchange of information, experience, skills, methods, and research results between projects and to provide support to new initiatives. It also seeks to procure and disseminate expertise in the peer education related areas of project practice, training, health promotion, life skills, policy making, and evaluation. Finally, the site is a tool for facilitating and enabling the capacities and skills of youth peer educators by coordinating information and skills development, involvement, and empowerment through peer-to-peer exchange and solidarity.

With regard to networking, specifically, a list of Europeer national Partners is provided on the site; users are urged to contact them for national information and to contribute to national youth peer education networks. In addition, a sister portal for and by youth peer educators that offers Internet peer educator radio is under construction and was due to go online in late November 2003.

Youth, Peer Education, HIV/AIDS.