More than two dozen high school students have successfully completed the new PeerForward Programme, launched by Mirrors to prepare themselves and their peers for higher education.

Twenty eight S3 and S4 students from CedarBridge Academy and the Berkeley Institute graduated from the programme in a ceremony last month.

Kimberley Jackson, Mirrors’ programme manager, said PeerForward was intended to help make students “peer influencers” to enhance a culture of college and career readiness.

"Very often, students focus much of their time and energy on meeting graduation requirements and not as much on preparing for what they will do after graduation,“ she said.

“Through the PeerForward Programme, the peer leaders received leadership and advocacy skills and learnt how to execute campaigns as they improved their college and career readiness preparations.

“They, along with their PeerForward advisers, worked diligently on ensuring they applied to colleges and scholarships in a timely manner as they tracked not only their college and career documentation but supported and encouraged their classmates to meet deadlines as well."

Ms Jackson said the programme was launched last summer with a three-day leadership workshop and continued with further sessions and events throughout the year.

“Peer leaders attended a fall session, which focused on developing campaign activities for scholarship applications and data management on the PeerForward scoreboard,” she said.

“Then there was a spring training session, which focused on scholarship applications and recruiting peer leaders for the upcoming academic year.

“As a team, they also met every other week, even virtually when necessary, to create and implement college preparation events to support their whole school.”

Richard Johnston, S4 peer leader from CedarBridge, said: “I expected just another regular workshop but when they started talking about colleges and resumes, I really got interested.

“Before that I did not have a single clue on how to apply for a college or how to budget for it.

“I’m now more open-minded about exploring colleges and universities. I also learnt how crucial it is to apply to certain places early and even apply to my dream colleges.”

Arianna Sabir, a Berkeley Institute S3 peer leader, enjoyed the experience.

“Team building and bonding time helped me to get out of my shell and step into my leadership role and talk with other people,” she said.

· For more information on the Mirrors Programme or to volunteer call 294-9291 or e-mail mirrors@gov.bm.