Luis Manuel Pinto is European Coordinator of the European Peer Training Organisation (EPTO) / Youth Initiative of the European Jewish Information Centre (CEJI)
EPTO is a network of organisations and individuals who are working with peer education on diversity issues. EPTO’s educational programmes are used around Europe in schools and other youth environments.

The idea of peer
Socially, what defines one’s identity is associated with one’s sex or gender, nationality, religious belief, physical ability, ethnic background, sexual orientation, social class or age group. A ‘peer’ is in the broader sense of the term, someone that share one or more descriptors of your identity that place you in certain society sector or group. In the youth work context, the term ‘peer’ has been mainstreamed focusing on the age factor, meaning that a peer is someone from your age group and surrounding community with which one shares common references.

Youth and power
The way young people are seen in society is sometimes associated with several stereotypes: immaturity, instability, rebellion, identity crisis, drug abuse, juvenile delinquency, premature pregnancy, slang… This stigmatization is in big part due to the place youth occupies in the binary world we live in. A binary world that separates older from younger is the same that separates men from women, teacher/student, native/immigrant or foreigner, able/disabled. Drawing a line separating this binary world we can identify where the power lies, where the norm is defined. Young people are often left out of the centre of power.

The importance of peer leadership
The contribution of peer leadership to young people has three main advantages: balance of power, acknowledgement of expertise and facilitating communication.

Power: Young people work with young people are taking the leadership for the issues that concern them directly. It creates a space where the relationship of power is horizontal and not vertical. Peer leadership generates a platform for growth that is not shadowed by older people or teachers, happening in parallel to the formal educational structures.

Expertise: Young people are the carriers of their own issues, therefore they are the experts on what concerns them. – “Never about us, without us”

Culture: In spite of the differences according to local community, there is a ‘culture of youth’, a sense of community united by age group. A set of cultural references related to contemporary events, to the media, to fashion. There is a common language and way of expressing one self.

Youth and Diversity
After the fall of the term ‘race’, the waves of feminism that were that characterized Europe the 70’s and the 80’s, the increase of mobility within population, phenomena like globalisation, internet and media young people today are living and experiencing diversity in a way that is no longer only a political discussion but an everyday life challenge. Most of young Europeans have a professional or school relationship or are friends or maybe even life partners with someone who is of a different ethnic or religious background, who has different physical or mental abilities, who has a different sexual orientation… Diversity for young people is an increasing factor of day-to-day life.
Having in the perspective the interaction between different social sectors, youth has central role to play in the management of the growing diversity. Youth has the potential to be and become the meeting point, the common ground where all other social sectors meeting as young men and young women, as young gay or lesbian, as young Roma, as young black, as young disabled…
Youth is the space where the representatives from the diversity we are referring can take the lead to become role models within youth and change the way, not only how different excluded groups can be perceived, but youth itself.

Partnership with Youth
The investment that is made in young people can follow in most of the cases two different ideologies: an investment in youth, to solve the ‘problems of youth’ or the investment in youth for the sake of the generation they will become as ‘active population’.
Youth is influenced by many bodies: government, NGOs, schools, law, media, corporate. Youth is also influenced by other youth – so often defined as ‘peer-pressure’. What tends to be forgotten is that the influence is an exchange that goes both ways and youth itself can influence the bodies with which interacts.
The challenge is to make a transition from an ideology of external investment to an approach of partnership between young people and all other actors in society. Diversity as a value implies equal opportunities in building the common future for all individuals in spite of age or any other social descriptor.
The first step for this change may be that young people become first aware of the potential of their actions and gain conscience of how much they can take part of the decisions that are made about them. The process may be defined as taking leadership.
Peer leadership promoting diversity, living diversity is modelling and proposing to society a possible world where all can be acknowledged and co-exist in a peaceful and respectful environment.

6 November 2005

Luis Manuel Pinto
EPTO – European Peer Training Organisation
c/o CEJI
319, Av. Brugmann
1180 Brussels
BELGIUM

Tel: +32 2 344 24 44
luis.pinto@ceji.org