Many manuals have been developed in an effort to provide guidelines for the training of peer educators or to propose ideas for activities that could be carried out in peer education projects with young people. This publication, however, focusses specifically on the training of trainers (ToT) of peer educators and provides an example of a training programme. The sample curriculum is based in part on experiences gained in a series of sub-regional training workshops in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, organised by the Joint United Nations Interagency Group on Young People's Health Development and Protection in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (IAG) from 2000 to 2003. The development of this manual was informed by feedback from the peer educators who participated in those workshops.

The manual is intended to be used by 'master' trainers in peer education when training future trainers. However, many of the exercises included in the training curriculum could also be used for training peer educators aged 16 years and older. Publishers emphasise that this manual cannot replace an in-person training course, but should primarily be seen as a support tool for a training workshop.

Sexual and reproductive health and the prevention of HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and substance abuse are the themes around which this trainingcurriculum has been developed. Special attention has been given to gender and cultural sensitivity in health education. The overall training guidelines and suggested techniques can, according to publishers, be applied to peer education activities in any field.

The manual is composed of the following sections:

• Section 1: From Theory to Practice in Peer Education - reviews the definition of peer education and its rationale and value in the context of different behaviour change theories and models.
• Section 2: Guidelines for Training of Trainers - provides the outline of asuggested 6-day ToT workshop. For each of the training topics the curriculum provides appropriate training exercises and notes.
• Section 3: A Sample Peer Education Session on HIV/AIDS - presents an example ofa field peer education activity. It describes a 3- to 4-hour HIV/AIDS educationsession with a group of adolescents.

Five annexes provide an annotated peer education resource list that contains guidelines on peer education, research resources, peer education training manuals and related curricula on youth health prevention, resource guides, journals, and a list of relevant websites. The annexes also include samples of pre- and post-test questionnaires and a peer educator and trainer skills rating form, a series of handouts related to training topics, and samples of additional training exercises.