What is it?
Street Outreach is a new initiative from the Lifestyles Center at Oswego State. Our Peer Educators will reach out to students in their environment, whether it is in the Campus Center, outside a residence hall or academic building or at a prescheduled event (Splash-in movie, sporting events, etc.).
Why Street Outreach?
We know largely from past experiences working with awareness campaigns, residence hall programs and tabling that students do not come to us...so this year, we've decided we will go to them. We are hoping that by utilizing the Street Outreach method, we will be reaching more students and by having one on one conversations, our hope is that they will ask questions they might not ask in a group setting. We also hope to put messages into the community new and engaging ways, make it fun and get out pertinent health information to the students of Oswego State.
Sample locations:
o Academic buildings
o Campus Center
o Residence Halls
o Dining Halls
o Outside in the quad
o Outside the Library
o Intramural events
o Sporting events
How will it work?
The Peer Educators will go out in teams of two for one hour per week. This semester, we have eight Peer Educators, so Street Outreach will happen four hours per week. They will be talking to students about information that was learned in class the previous week as well as sharing promotional materials that will hopefully match with the theme of that week's topic. For example: if they are talking to their peers about alcohol use on campus, we will have them give away materials with social norming statistics on them.
The Peer Educators are also being challenged to come up with creative ways to reach out to students. For example, another university wanted to show their students how far they could smoke in front of buildings. They collected old shoes and strung 20 together (indicating 20 feet), beginning at the door of an academic building. The students stood at the end of the row of shoes and handed out social norming materials as well as cessation materials. It was wildly successful.
Guidelines:
During training, we established that there should be no fuss and no ruckus. We will approach people quietly-we want to be in the environment without being disruptive. And if someone says "no thanks," we will respect that.
The interactions should only last a few minutes, followed by evaluation via Student Voice PDA's and having the student swipe their ID cards in our mini swipe machines. The students will then be entered in a drawing to win a prize.
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