Susannah Farr
Founder & CEO, gold Youth Development Agency; youth peer-education leader
Cape Town, South Africa
Summary
Leader in youth peer education and behaviour-change programming: since founding GOLD (2004) she has developed a structured, multi-year peer-education curriculum that trains facilitators and peer educators to drive positive peer pressure, improve school engagement and address youth risk behaviours. ashoka+1
Social entrepreneur building a hybrid NGO + enterprise model: she created gold-enterprises as a for-profit arm to sustain and scale GOLD's work and to create employment and placement pathways for programme graduates. trigaventures+1
Recognised innovator and networked fellow: her work has been recognised by fellowships and awards (Ashoka Fellow, Triga fellow) and by the African Union Innovating Education in Africa prize, reflecting regional recognition of GOLD's scalability and impact. ashoka+2
Focus on scaling through practical toolkits and technology: GOLD has packaged its best practices into a digital and franchisable product (Peer2Peer) and pursues both deep social franchising and wide government/replicator dissemination to expand reach. goldyouth+2