Peppers receive training to conduct presentations, reaching their audience through a variety of interactive strategies including icebreakers, skits and role playing.  During weekly meetings and skit rehearsals, they learn improvisational theater techniques and personal development exercises that help them engage people in a highly experiential way.

 

Imagine attending two workshops on preventing Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs).  The first one is a lecture presented by a qualified physician discussing the importance of safer sex.  The second one is a dramatization, presented by college students, of a girl being pressured to have sex with her boyfriend without a condom.  Now imagine freezing the skit as the boyfirend whispers in her ear, "If you really loved me, you'd do it."  Should she or shouldn't she?  How will she decide?

 

This proactive approach helps the audience build healthy decision-making skills by connecting thoughts to feelings instead of maintaining an intellectually passive understanding.  They are directly involved in the decision-making process and most of them, at one time or another, have experienced what they are watching on stage.   And they know that the presenters have likely experienced this too.