Health Education and Workshops
Community PROMISE is a HIV/STD prevention intervention that relies on role model stories and peers advocates from transgender (male-to-female), ballroom and young men who have sex with men (YMSM) communities to motivate other members of the community to move toward safer sex behaviors and/or risk reduction behaviors associated with sex, acohol and/or drug use.
PROMISE is an acronym for “Peers Reaching Out and Modeling Interventions Strategies, and has four key components for implementation:
- Community Indentification - involves individual interviews staff, peer educators, staff of agencies providing services to the population, community members and the target population
- Role Model Stories - are the heart of the project. They are brief publications that depict personal accounts from individuals in the target population who have made,are planning to and/or have already made risk-reducing behavioral change
- Peer Advocates - are volunteers from the target population who help distribute the role model stores. The peer advocates encourage their peers to read and talk about the stories within their own network of friends.
- Evaluation - provides evidence of effectiveness in reaching the target population and also gives the agency information on how to further improve Community PROMISE.
Role models stories are placed inside COLOURS safer sex kit's, promoted via MySpace, Facebook and converted to video for dissemination.