euro peers – Ways to improve life skills is a project which, within the framework of primary addiction prevention, was conducted in ten European countries across a period of 14 months from November 1996 to December 1997. The idea behind euro peers builds on the positive experience had with peer education in primary addiction prevention. Prevention can only be carried out to a limited extent in terms of specific drugs. Instead it needs to take addiction developments into account as a whole in order to prevent the development of manifest addictions and dependencies.
The Guidelines for euro peers were developed based on the knowledge that addiction and dependency are phenomena that are largely independent of gender, age and social status. This is why tailored-made programmes need to be developed and tested for various target groups. euro peers therefore focussed on what had previously been a rather neglected group – namely 12 to 14 year-olds.
euro peers was funded by the Commission of the European Community and was conducted under the overall management of the Landschaftsverband Westfalen Lippe (LWL). The »VITAL« Office from Steyr/Austria was responsible for the technical coordination.