Youth Initiative

Friends in Focus

Friends in Focus: for youth, with youth

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is deeply committed to promoting a safer and healthier world for children and young people to grow and thrive to reach their potential, in particular ensuring their health and well-being through the prevention of drug use, drug use disorders and other risky behaviours. To support prevention initiatives around the world, UNODC has created prevention programmes that focus on families to help parents become better parents through enhanced caregiving, as an effective investment in the healthy development of children and youth.

But UNODC also believes that young people can play a role beyond being solely the ‘receiver’ of prevention efforts. When provided with the right resources, training, and support, youth can also contribute to a more positive environment for themselves, their families, and their peers, through meaningful participation at all levels of the prevention system. And more importantly, active youth engagement is not only beneficial for the community or society; it also benefits the participating youths themselves, through their own growth, learning, and self-realization. And this is why UNODC is preparing the Friends in Focus initiative.

The Multiplier Effect

With Friends in Focus, young people learn about preventive thinking for themselves and how they can disseminate it amongst their friends. Peer trainers will be trained to deliver multiple sessions to a group of peers, who will then have similar interactions with their friends. The sessions will be interactive in nature, and help youths to recognize risk and protective factors to drug use, critically reflect on information about drugs from media, think about normative beliefs, support them in helping their friends, set goals, etc.

Why peer-to-peer?

Agents of socialization such as people or social institutions that surround an individual influence the person’s attitudes, self-concept, and behaviours, and they can range from the family, school, community, peers, mass media, etc. Children’s earliest interactions occur in the family, where they learn basic social norms, values, language, manners, and social conduct. As they grow older, children start to spend increasingly more time away from the family, most often in school and with same-aged peers. The influence peer groups begins to grow, which can exert either positive or negative effects on the young adolescent’s social development, behaviour, attitudes, and normative beliefs.

Substance use or other potentially harmful behaviours of peers can negatively influence an early adolescent’s behaviour. But why not leverage on the positive influence of peer networking? Peer-to-peer interactions may allow more authentic and genuine interactions, compared to those with parents, teachers, or other authoritative figures. Healthy attitudes and social normative beliefs related to substance use are important protective factors against drug use, as are good social skills, and resilient mental and emotional health. ‘Friends in Focus’ aims to build on the transformative power of youth and their potential as game changers, in exerting positive peer influence through peer education on these values, skills, and norms.

Youth Mainstreaming in Prevention

In line with Youth2030, the first-ever United Nations (UN) system-wide Youth Strategy to transform the work of the UN with a priority to reorient and mainstream its activities towards youth, UNODC is also committed to empowering youth and ensuring youth engagement at all levels. This includes fostering an enabling environment for youth to allow for co-creation all throughout various processes throughout the programme development, implementation, and evaluation processes. Having youth be meaningfully engaged in substance use prevention is a strong asset for programme development, especially for programmes targeting youth. It provides access to valuable youth perspectives and insights which are essential to build relevant, relatable, and attractive programmes that promote the well-being of youth with drug use prevention at its core. It is also a great opportunity for youth to take part in the development and implementation of such programmes, as they learn by doing, develop skills, and become empowered to advocate for policies and interventions that matter for them and their peers.

In the context of drug use prevention, the UNODC has been supporting youths with opportunities to participate and become active members of a community of young people committed to supporting the health and wellbeing of their peers through the Youth Initiative. Youths participate, learn and reflect on the potential impact that drug use can have on themselves, their peers, communities, and are encouraged to think of ways to address these issues and be involved in drug demand reduction approaches in their respective communities, regions, and contexts. And now, Friends in Focus is under development in the UNODC pipeline, to further support active youths in turning their thoughts into action with practical tools and resources. What’s more, youth are not only involved in the implementation of the programme as the main actors, they also actively contribute to the development itself. Youth from all over the world are coming together for youth consultations, sharing their perspectives and recommendations in order to bring the programme as relatable, accessible, and understandable to youths as best possible.