A driven women of integrity, who never accepts No as an answer, is using her birthday to raise awareness and get support for a battle South Africa is fighting.
“If influential young leaders changed their lives in positive ways and encouraged their peers to do the same, imagine South Africa and Africa’s potential.”
That is what drives Gold Peer Education Development Agency (gold), and why Susannah Farr, CEO and founder, believes that if you can turn negative peer pressure 360 degrees into positive pressure – it is the most powerful force for change.
Farr is an inspirational women who has dedicated her life to empowering others. She is the founder of gold Agency.
“Gold is an NPC (not for profit) agency with 11 years of experience. Gold is tackling the youth crisis head on. Seeking positive outcomes for teenagers and youth from vulnerable communities. Breaking cycles of poverty and hopelessness. Gold is transformation.”
Today is her birthday and she has chosen to spend it in Kraaifontein. She is attending grade 10 at Masibambane Secondary School in Kraaifontein after spending the night at one of the gold programme youth facilitators houses.
Her aim is to raise awareness of the crisis that we are facing and encourage citizens to join the gold ‘Revolution of Hope’.
Gold mentors and trains youth, giving them the support and positive guidance that they so badly need in order to develop skills, leadership, to stay in school, make wise choices and inspire change within their schools and communities.
The gold programme increases their employability and connects them to opportunities post school.
“The vision of the business I began is to see a generation of young African leaders – very often labelled as the ‘youth bulge crisis’ at the bottom of the pyramid – given the platform and tools to confront and overcome the pressures and desperate circumstances that they face.”
“We have seen how peer pressure works!”
“When given the love, opportunity and mandate to influence their peers positively, even the most negative role models begin to have something rise up inside of them. They realise that they are valuable, they start to value others and fight to be part of a movement of positive change that is bigger than their circumstances.”
“They make tough choices in order to break the patterns of the past”
Over the past decade gold has not only reached thousands of young people in communities in South Africa, Botswana and Zambia, but the results and outcomes, measured through an auditing process, are measurable and phenomenal.
See Susannah’s posts pf her ‘back to school’ day on gold’s Facebook page or visit their website for more info.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments or follow GoodThingsGuy on Facebook & Twitter to keep up to date with good news as it happens.
by 