During 11 – 13 June, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime hosted the 3rd Informal Technical Consultation on developing UNODC’s new youth-based peer-to-peer drug use prevention programme, Friends in Focus. As part of UNODC’s commitment on supporting meaningful youth engagement in drug use prevention work, Friends in Focus aims to support youths (14-25 years old) with resources and tools that will help them be more active in prevention efforts in their schools and communities, and it supplements UNODC’s ongoing efforts in promoting a culture of prevention in line with prevention science.
As children and youth grow, their surrounding social influences continue to evolve around them. Youths spend more time with friends, whose influence can have either positive or negative impacts. Friends in Focus aims to leverage on such peer-to-peer interactions to help youths (14-25 years old) to learn about preventive thinking and disseminate it amongst their friends. Peer trainers will go through interactive sessions to learn about recognising risk and protective factors related to substance use, critically reflecting misinformation and normative beliefs, and examining social dynamics and how it affects group pressure, with the hopes that it will help youth better react when confronted with particular situations of social pressure. The sessions will also guide youths on how they can also support their friends (with due consideration of their own safety), and on disseminating their learnings from Friends in Focus. In short, Friends in Focus strives to achieve a multiplier effect through cascade trainings from master trainers to peer trainers, to peers, and then to networks of friends, to foster a culture of prevention and well-being within their networks.