What is Peer Education? New film explains all!

Hello, my name is Emily and I volunteer with Fast Forward and SPEN. My most recent work with SPEN has been to create a film called ‘What is Peer Education?’. The idea to create a film was initially put forward to provide people visiting the SPEN website to have an easy and interesting format to gain an understanding of what peer education is, and to gain an insight to the work done by Fast Forward and SPEN.

My initial ideas about making the film were a bit random at first, but gradually it came to centre around the definition of peer education that was already on the SPEN website. Through isolating key ideas within the definition such as issues, confidence, awareness and understanding, I then interviewed some students doing peer education themselves about their ideas around these words, and their understanding of peer education. Following these interviews, the film began to come together. Through using the interview footage with the peer educators as a basic framework, I filled it out with film and photos taken at sessions, and used voiceovers to create a narrative.

It has been a really enjoyable experience creating the film, I have learnt a lot about film making and gained an insight into what peer educators enjoy about the process of becoming a peer educator and what they get out of it.

I hope this film gives other people an insight into the great work done at SPEN and inspires more young people to become involved in peer education too!