Building Positive Peer Culture

 

Giving the youth the personal courage , confidence  and self-esteem they need to make the right choices is key to them becoming successful and positive members of society. At Triumph Youth Services, we instill those attributes into the youth through Positive Peer Culture.

 

 

The following is a brief article that explains Positive Peer Culture:

PPC is a peer-helping model designed to improve social competence and cultivate strengths in troubled and troubling youth. “Care and concern” for others (or “social interest”) is the defining element of PPC. Rather than demanding obedience to authority or peers, PPC demands responsibility, empowering youth to discover their greatness. Caring is made fashionable and any hurting behavior totally unacceptable. PPC assumes that as group members learn to trust, respect, and take responsibility for the actions of others, norms can be established. These norms not only extinguish antisocial conduct, but more importantly reinforce pro-social attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Positive values and behavioral change are achieved through the peer-helping process. Helping others increases self-worth. As one becomes more committed to caring for others, s/he abandons hurtful behaviors.

Essential Components

  • Building group responsibility: Group members learn to keep one another out of trouble, much as they would be expected to do with their siblings at home.
  • The group meeting: Serves as the problem-solving arena in which youth are able to help one of their peers in a safe environment; meetings are structured: problem reporting, awarding the meeting, problem solving, group leader’s summary. A distinct problem list is used in the program to ensure a universal language.
  • Service learning: Youth are engaged in multiple community projects, developed to reinforce the value of helping others; many projects are conducted along side adult service clubs. Youth are taught that community service is an expected part of community living, not a punishment for misbehavior. In the context of a Positive Peer Culture program, service learning is not simply a program component — service learning is meant to develop a life-style of community responsibility and action.
  • Teamwork primacy: A highly successful program management model, which assumes that “teamwork” is the highest administrative priority. Staff teams are organized around distinct groups of children.