Youth Peer & Outreach

"The little program with a big heart"

Youth Peer & Outreach is a project that hums. Visiting one of the centres is like stepping into a beautifully functioning family. For youth clients, volunteers, university and college students, junior and senior staff, management partners and administrators, it is simply an enriching place to be.

​

​

What is now called Youth Peer began in 1998 when EPIC adapted the program

from Island Community Justice. In 2016, with on-going funding from Nova Scotia

Education and Early Childhood and  in partnership with Schools Plus, Outreach

became a reality with Youth Peer now able to serve three additional communities:

New Waterford, Glace Bay and Northside.

To sum up in a sentence what can truly only be experienced, Youth Peer provides a supportive place for at-risk youth, ages 8 – 18, to be tutored and mentored by volunteers who are close to their age. It is this relationship—youth and peer mentor—that sparks the magic that happens here.

After an hour of one-on-one tutoring, the magic continues into the second hour with social mentoring, guitar instruction, creative art projects, and educational games.

Socializing with university and high school mentors, staff, and other youth is a big part of the learning process for clients. Young people want to come back because they know they are welcomed and accepted unconditionally as “part  of the family.”

credits:
original ‘bird/book’ Youth Peer logo by Blake MacLean, former volunteer.
“The little program with a big heart” is a quote from a Volunteer Canada article (no longer available online) about the Youth Peer Transformation project; written Spring, 2004; Volunteer Canada was one of the funders during the 2003-2004 year.