Ira Sachnoff

Program Coordinator, Galileo High School

Director, Peer Resources

"Ira Sachnoff basically was sent in to rescue me at Galileo High School. It was the first Peer Resource Center and I was assigned to go there and start it but not long after it was clear that I needed help. Ira was already my friend from San Francisco State’s Center for Institutional Change program and had a background in peer counseling and a knack for working with teenagers. He could relate to every kind of student from the brainy, to the athletic, to the the student struggling and know how to plug them in and engage them in their education. He saw each of them as individuals and made them feel special and understood. We had a career fair, a peer counseling program, a peer tutoring program, and even a trip to Yosemite to do training and chill together. Ira always did everything with his whole heart and great gusto. For Ira, Galileo was just the beginning. Ira was responsible for expanding the Peer program to many high schools and middle schools across the San Francisco Unified School District. He met with respect from administrators, principals and of course many more students. He has always been there to help me personally as he continued his work with the Peer programs and beyond. A big salute to Ira. So glad to still be your friend 40 years and counting."

Ira Sachnoff is currently a School Alcohol, Tobacco, and Peer Helping Program Consultant for school districts and counties throughout California. He has his own consulting company, Peer Resource Training and Consulting, where in the last 37 years has trained over 5,000 youth peer educators and over 1,000 adults in the art of setting up Comprehensive Prevention and Education programs for youth. Ira has conducted over 250 Brief Intervention (BI) trainings and has trained over 1,000 people on BI techniques related to working with youth using substances. He has been responsible for assisting over 1,000 people in setting up BI sessions in schools and community-based organizations. Ira was also the Founding President of the National Peer Helpers Association and was a Board Member of the California Association of Peer Programs for over 10 years. From 1980-1996, Ira was the Director for the San Francisco Peer Resource Programs. In this capacity, Ira was responsible for the supervision and training of 25 Peer Resource Program Coordinators, who trained over 1,000 youth who then served over 20,000 youth in the San Francisco Unified School District

"Ever since I was trained as a Peer Counselor at my old high school in New York City in the "Friendly Alternative Program" back in 1970 , I was hooked. Something clicked, bells went off, I get excited and I never looked back since those days. I spent three years as a Youth Peer Counselor using all these new fantastic skills dealing with all the issues we were facing. Then in the late 70's after moving out to San Francisco, I came into a very "student centered program" at SFSU that was starting a Program at Galileo High School. They looked at me and said, "Well Ira, you were a Peer Counselor in high school, go out there and help get it started." So for four years with Marilyn Hoffman we started the first official Peer Resource Center, and then a few more popped up and then after four years we started to take it District-wide and started the SF Peer Resource Programs (a collaborative of the SFUSD and the SF Education Fund) that was dedicated to growing the programs and to training youth to become Peer Helpers, Peer Educators, Peer Counselors, Peer Mediators and Peer Advocates for each other. It was a wonderful run and here it is now 40 years later still going strong! While today I still consult and train for a bunch of County Offices of Education, and still train around 800 youth each year and a couple of hundreds of teachers in Peer Helping and Peer Education, it all still goes back to the bottom line of when I was a high school student myself, and helped run the SF Peer Resource Programs. We believe that Youth Reaching Youth is STILL the most powerful resource we have. Was back then, still is today."

Ira Sachnoff