Focus group participants at WISH mentioned the need for peer training and the UpWords group asked for help that would make them more effective mentors:

We need more mentors for new writers: to help others to write, act as scribe or secretary or interview them. You can help us to be better mentors: Make sure we are not writing our own ideas, but helping others to write theirs. (UpWords Focus Group)

In this excerpt from an UpWords article, Dave Apsey reflects on his experience as a peer volunteer at the 17th International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm in Vancouver in May 2005:

Being a peer at this conference made me think about my job as a Peer Supervisor at the Washington Needle Depot, and how it could be improved. How we can employ drug users in a variety of tasks, from front line street workers, doing surveys, education and even counsellors. (Dave Apsey Peer Volunteers Break New Ground, UpWords 1(2) July 2006)

Aside from providing financial support and training to a deserving group in the community, peer programs are often praised because they make the organization more effective. As people who have been there (and often still are there) they can be more influential and sensitive than workers who have not.

So what is the role of the instructor who has not been street-involved? This conversation in one of the Focus Groups sheds some light on this:

Frances: Betsy, have you ever experienced a violent relationship or used drugs?
Betsy: Not really, but there was lots of violence in the streets where I used to live Johannesburg, South Africa. And I have never used injection drugs. Do you think I would I be more effective if I had been a drug user?
Star: If you were a counsellor, but you’re not.
Angel: You’ve got empathy.
Frances: I don’t care if you’ve had experience or not. You’re willing to learn as you go along… There are so many out there that ruin people’s lives because they don’t have that experience, but not you. (Focus Group #1)