My Peer Health Exchange Experience

Fall semester of my sophomore year at Fordham, I joined a national organization based out of Fordham, called Peer Health Exchange, or PHE. Originally, I had joined on behalf of a good friend, who relayed to me that they were short on recruitment. I did not expect to have such a rewarding experience with the program, nor to gain the knowledge and friendships I have made during my time with PHE. 

This is the whole national organization's goal!

Peer Health Exchange is a volunteer organization, which recruits, selects, and trains college students to teach in low-income, urban high schools. PHE believes that health education is critical to a high school student's experience, and partners with schools to provide or supplement their health education programs. The college student volunteers, or Health Educators (H.E.s), learn the curriculum to bring to the classrooms, and act as approachable and relatable mentors to the high school students. H.E.s teach four workshop units: Reflection, Communication & Advocacy, Accessing Resources, and Decision Making. These workshops, while giving students valuable knowledge, also empower them to make informed choices that can contribute to all areas of their lives. 

My PHE materials!

I have taught the Accessing Resources workshops for my entire PHE experience. Accessing Resources focuses on giving students the knowledge they need to find valid information on their own health questions, with an emphasis on sexual health. I have walked away from classrooms countless times feeling as if I had delivered to students information that they could benefit from. It has been so rewarding for me to see the students further question me about facts, and knowing that I gave them the knowledge and skills they can use to make choices that are right for them. 

I too, have benefitted from my time with PHE. Thanks to my training, I have become a more confident public speaker, and learned a lot about making healthy decisions that I did not know before. I have gotten involved with the Bronx community around Fordham, and established friendships within the Fordham community that I would have otherwise never made. I look forward to the remaining time I will spend with PHE, as it has become an incredibly significant part of my Fordham experience. 

Peer Educators: We Save Lives!

As a sophomore, I became involved with a club on campus called Peer Educators, which has been an extremely rewarding experience. Peer Educators is a club that strives to improve the quality of student life at Fordham by encouraging positive behaviors on and off campus. Our goal is to decrease the harmful effects associated with the misuse and abuse of alcohol and other drugs. Fordham's Peer Educators are advised and trained by the Office of Substance Abuse Prevention and Student Support (OSAPSS). As a club, we provide accurate information to the student body so that students make informed and safe decisions. 

Peer Educators is split into three main committees: Substance and Alcohol Education (SAE), Marketing, and Passport. Each of these three committees plays a vital role in reaching out to the student body to provide accurate information and promote safe behaviors. 

We distributed water to Seniors for their first Senior Night

This year, I am a Co-Chairperson for the Substance and Alcohol Education Committee (SAE). As a committee, we have many important responsibilities. One of our biggest responsibilities is providing information on drugs and alcohol to freshmen for Core Programming, which is mandatory for all freshmen. We also have Student Awareness Days throughout the year to gauge student knowledge and usage of various substances, as well as to provide all students with information on the substance that we are focusing on for the particular Awareness Day. Additionally, we distribute water to students to encourage them to drink responsibly, which includes staying hydrated. This past Thursday, we handed out water to the Seniors who attended this semester's first Senior Night. We put labels with fun little phrases that encouraged safe drinking practices on every bottle of water.

The September poster this year

The Marketing Committee, like SAE, strives to spread knowledge to the student body about how to make safe and informed decisions. Each month, the Marketing Committee creates a poster that is posted in every building and all around campus. These posters give advice or facts to the students about a particular topic. We are usually able to determine the success of a particular poster campaign by seeing how many of the posters are taken by students. By the end of the month, there are usually very few posters still where they were posted because students take them and hang them in their dorm rooms. 

The Passport

Staten Island Ferry Excursion

Our third committee, the Passport Committee, plans free excursions for students. In September, I led an excursion to the Staten Island Ferry, which was a ton of fun. It was a beautiful day, and we had a great view of the Statue of Liberty from the Ferry. The Passport Committee is also responsible for creating the Passport, which is a great resource for students. The Passport is a small booklet that easily fits in a purse or a pocket that is filled with restaurants, entertainment, sightseeing locations, museums, sporting events, and anything else that students should know about in the city. Even as a junior, I still refer to my Passport whenever I want to do something in the city. 

I really love being a Peer Educator. We are a student-run organization that is focused on helping our fellow students. We are all Fordham students who want to encourage our peers to make safe and informed decisions both on and off campus. At one of our induction ceremonies, a Fordham Dean told us that we save lives. I am not sure if we have actually saved any lives with our work as Peer Educators, but I certainly feel like we are making a difference on campus. By simply distributing accurate information to students, we are making sure that students are not ignorant about the consequences of their actions. We cannot force anyone to make safe decisions, but we are making sure that they are informed decisions, which I consider to be invaluable.

December Preview

December at Fordham can be short and quick – with just a week left of classes, two reading days, and then finals.  But that doesn’t mean that Fordham shuts down for the month.  Not only is the campus beautifully decorated for the season, but also in between studying, writing papers, and packing for the long winter break, students still take time to enjoy themselves with fun campus activities. Every year, the Campus Activity Board (CAB), the club responsible for planning fun events for students on campus, has a Holiday Week. Every day of the week there is another CAB-sponsored activity to get everyone into the holiday spirit.  Some events include a Cultural Affairs Christmas Ticket Raffle, in which students can win $20 tickets for the Radio City Christmas Spectacular or for The Nutcracker, a Holiday Fair, a viewing of the holiday-classic Elf, gingerbread house making, and a trip to go ice skating at Bryant Park.

Another annual tradition is the Peer Educators’ Holiday Scavenger Hunt.  This is a fun event where you and a team of friends are given a list of tasks and clues (related to the holidays) that you must complete or find in the Lincoln Center area.  Prizes are awarded and hot chocolate is given out! A Senior Night is also scheduled for this month.  Senior Nights are themed dance parties, only open to seniors at the Rose Hill campus.  This month, the theme is Santa’s Workshop (I’ll be dressing as an elf!)

This month is also an exciting month for sports at Fordham.  After winning our first ever NCAA FCS home playoff game versus Sacred Heart University 37-27, Fordham’s record-breaking football team travels to Towson University in Maryland next Saturday for the next round of the playoffs.  On the same day, our men’s basketball team plays St. John’s University during the 2013 MSG Holiday Festival at Madison Square Garden.

Of course, many more activities will be going on at Fordham this month, but these are a few of the things I’m looking forward to this December!