Assessing the Quality of Youth Peer Education Programmes

This assessment tool, part of a global youth peer education toolkit from Family Health International, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and Youth Peer Education Network (Y-PEER), is designed for assessment teams, project managers, supervisors, and others to assess the quality of community-based youth peer education (YPE) programmes. The tool provides instruments and a process that can help identify ways to improve the operation of YPE programmes, programmes that focus on peer education on health and offer theatre training as the vehicle. Through research, seven key themes emerged that contribute to the quality and effectiveness of a YPE programme to which an eighth technical frameworks checklist has been added.

The checklists assess the involvement and function of the following:

• Stakeholders' Cooperation
• Parental Involvement
• Youth Involvement
• Youth-Adult Partnerships
• Peer Education Cooperation
• Gender Equity and Equality
• Community Involvement
• Technical Frameworks

The assessment manual has assessment conclusions instructions in "Summary of Checklist Results" and further resources in "Selected Peer Education Resources"

It also outlines the process of implementing the assessment with the following steps:

1. Plan Assessment, Assemble and Train Team
2. Conduct Interviews
3. Complete Checklists and Develop Report

It includes interview guidelines for peer educators, staff and management, parents, and stakeholders. In conclusion, these evidence-based checklists were created to gather information from a range of people involved in a YPE programme and to determine how a peer education project of YPE can best function.