Nae Excuse for Sectarian Abuse

Peer Education

What are we going to do? - Young people from PYP are peer educating other young people about sectarianism and how sectarianism can affect different communities and how it can affect different people.

How do we peer educate? - We would do this by going to other organisations and youth groups and discussing with the other young people about sectarianism and anti-sectarianism.

What do you young people think of peer education? -

Peer Educators feel good to able to reach out to teach people their own age; they feel included and enjoy sharing information with each other; they fell its about learning about different issues; they feel they can help with people's self-esteem and confidence and they feel they are developing their own people skills.

Non-peer educators saw the positives and negatives of peer education:

It is a good source to get good knowledge and information; a good opportunity to learn about different issues and feel that peer educators understand young peoples problems better than teachers. However, they also said that they might not listne to people their own age; they don't know all the answers and they don't always want to participate in activities, exercises etc.

In December 2015 Nae Excuse peer mentors from Parkhead Youth Project embarked on a joint project with FARE in Easterhouse. The purpose of the group was to explore the effects sectarianism on the lives of young people in the community. The first six weeks was a chance for 6 peer mentors from PYP to work with a group of 6 participants from FARE to share their knowledge and experience of sectarianism and gather research and ideas to create a selection of short animation about sectarianism from their own perspective.

Some comments from the participants during the project:  

“Sectarianism happens because people drink too much”

"I've said sectarian comments loads of times but I didn't realise it was that bad" 

“You don’t really see sectarianism as a problem because its normal”

“My family can be sectarian but I never realised it because that’s the way they brought me up”

“Sectarianism is a much bigger issues than I thought. I now know it can happen everywhere”

View their animations here: