THE PROGRAMME

Success stories

Behaviour change isn’t easy. GOLD peer educators know that behaviour change amongst their peers starts with change in their own lives.

These are some of the many stories of peer educators who have turned their lives around and are role-modelling positive behaviour change to their peers. These young people are living out the belief that personal transformation leads to group transformation and then to community transformation.

Names of some peer educators have been changed for the sake of privacy.

Thandi is a peer educator in a community where many of her peers are orphans. Orphans are exempt from paying school fees, but they have to prove their orphan status by providing a lot of documentation. Many of the orphans leave school as it is so difficult to get all the documentation Thandi went around to all her orphaned peers to help them gather the documentation they needed to become exempt from paying school fees. Some of these children had already dropped out of school. As a result of her efforts to help her peers, her orphaned peers are back at school.

George is an 18 year old who has been a peer educator for 2 years. George repeated his grades four times during primary school, often missing classes and smoking a lot of dagga.

After 2 years on the GOLD Peer Education programme, George is reporting a 90% school attendance rate and is proud to have quit marijuana and cigarettes. He is still struggling to improve his academic performance, but has been playing a leading role in the community garden that his peer education group has undertaken as their community project. He hopes to take advantage of the government’s young farmers grant and engage in vegetable farming when he completes his schooling.

Nana is a 15 year senior peer educator who was suffering from low self-esteem and struggling to interact with other learners when she joined the program.

After a lot of input from her facilitator and going through the skills training sessions, Nana is now one of the most outspoken members of the group. She has been spearheading talk groups where peer educators discuss issues and share information around HIV/AIDS and other youth issues with other learners in her school. She now plans to become a psychologist and wants to host her own talk show one day.

Yanga is a Junior peer educator who has to care for a younger sibling at home. He is so dedicated to the peer education programme that he fetches his sibling at daycare and brings him along to every session so that he doesn’t miss anything.

Vukile is a Junior Peer Educator who lives with his grandparents, cousin and aunties. His mother and father split up when he was young. Before becoming a peer educator, Vukile, used to be very disruptive in the class. He liked making a noise while the teacher was trying to teach, but when he was chosen as a peer educator and learned about the peer educator’s roles, things changed.

He knows that he is a role model now and has changed his behaviour. He gives to his community and he recognised a peer who was in need and gave him some of his school uniform. His short term goal is to finish matric, get a drivers license and then work to earn money so he can go to university and study electrical engineering.

Lungile is a Senior Peer Educator and was part of a group of peer educators who did a lesson delivery about substance abuse during a school assembly. Afterwards, one of the learners approached her to tell her that he had a drug problem. At first Lungile thought the guy was kidding and she was afraid that he was offended that they were addressing the drug issue. After a while, she realised that he was serious. They chatted and she referred him to the rehab centre. She was so proud that the presentation could make such a difference to the learners.