Students to Become Involved in the Peer Counselling Programme

Students are being urged to get involved in the Peer Counselling Programme instituted by the Ministry of Education.
The encouragement comes from Jovan Johnson, head boy of Edwin Allen High School in Clarendon, who said that his years of involvement in the programme, have helped him to develop a positive work attitude, and the determination and confidence to seek after his goals.
“It has done me proud; I can speak of that fact. In the deepest of situations, I am able to beam with confidence and even if I don’t achieve what I wanted in the first place, I can still feel satisfied that I did give it my all, thanks to peer counselling,” he stated, while commending Peace in Life Counselling, which conducts the peer counselling training sessions.Jovan said that the school, on the whole, has benefited from the programme, which seeks to train peer counsellors to lead by example.
“It has done a lot for Edwin Allen High School. We have so many students and we have peer counsellors, who are assigned to the various classes. They act as mentors to those students,” he outlined, noting that the head girl along with the deputies, are also peer counsellors.
He noted further that the peer counselling group is very active, participating in activities such as Parent Teachers’ Association (PTA) meetings, drug marches, and World AIDS Day events. “We make the students see us as examples, not merely as confidantes, but as examples.”
In the meantime, Jovan advised students, to seek to develop strategies, born of strength of character, which will allow them to survive the challenges they will encounter in these changing times.
“We need to become enlightened and devise survival strategies, those that will allow us to adapt to changing conditions, because we are changing and so we need to adapt. Children and parents, we need to come together and we need to forge ways, devise survival strategies to enable us to better ourselves, to push the Jamaican society forward and to develop the world,” he stressed.
Edwin Allen High School was awarded first place in the recently held Peer Counselling Competition, organised by Peace in Life Counselling Ministries in Clarendon.