"Peer helping" is an umbrella term for a variety of services whose distinctiveness lies in providing formal and informal services by "lay" people who are primarily youth. In these programs youth are recruited, trained, and supervised to reach out to peers who are lonely, isolated, or lack the social skills to cope with the peer group culture. The training teaches youth how to ask open-ended questions that facilitate the building of relationships with both peers and adults in authority. Youth are trained to listen, to conduct peer mediation, and to help a peer in making a decision without giving advice. The training also includes instruction in how to recognize when referral to professional services is needed. The primary benefits of peer helping are in the fostering of the three basic components of healthy self-esteem: a sense of one's unique attributes, membership in a group or groups that one values, and participation in meaningful roles that make a contribution to others or society as a whole. The underlying model for peer helping is the nourishment of the yearning to act out of compassion in serving others who need help. Many youth are finding this dimension to their peer training through the Biblically based Peer Ministry program. Training sessions are set in the context of some message or story from the New Testament that teaches and/or illustrates what it means to be compassionate toward others. 9 references