ABSTRACT
Peer resources can occur from “cradle to grave.” The focus is primarily on youth as peer helpers, although, peer helping occurs at every age. Peer helping emphasizes and builds on opposite side of that phenomenon, positive side of peer influence. Peer programs can help train youth in life skills that help with future employability. These life skills include personal development, communication, decision making/problem solving, and conflict resolution/violence prevention. Johnson stated that all psychological development may be described as progressive loss of egocentrism and an increase in ability to take wider and more complex perspectives—an empathic process that takes place with peer helping. Peer-led programs anchored in social learning theory build on early social inoculation approaches. If schools, businesses, and communities viewed peer pressure as way of life and saw people with peer helping training as resources, then peer pressure would move from negative to positive, rather than emphasizing the negative, as “just say no” campaigns tend to do.
