In September billboards of the Youth Peer Education Network - Y-peer - appeared in Minsk streets.

The Belarusian network of youth initiatives (Y-Peer Belarus) is a part of the international Y-Peer Network and represents a global initiative for teaching the basics of healthy lifestyles using the principles of peer education. The network operation was initiated by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in September 2007; this is an electronic web-based resource for the peer education volunteers www.ypeer.by.

The idea of billboards is to inform about the existence of the peer education network, as well as the presentation of the ambassadors of the youth initiative – a musical band called Open Space. It is planned that 32 billboards will be placed in different parts of the city. Placing billboards in Oblast centres is considered.

“Y-PEER network has been here for several years now, but one has to run a number of campaigns until it gets popular with young people as in other countries. I am confident about the Y-PEER network potential and the need for it among teenagers who have lots of questions because of their age. Our task is to provide easily accessible and reliable information to the younger generation. The billboards are the first big step towards the network publicity. We are especially grateful to the Ministry of Health for their assistance in this work”, commented Vitaliy Matievskiy, lead singer of Open Space.