SWIPE TO MAKE AN IMPACT
Influencing Africa’s future with gold Youth Development Agency
Assisting 10 million young African leaders in cultivating strong character and integrity, enabling them with the essential tools and support to realize their utmost potential.
More than half of African youth – over 200 million people – are born into poverty, growing up in communities that visibly offer little hope. CEO of Non-Profit Organization, gold Youth Development Agency (gold-youth), Susannah Farr says, “Most of these young people lack positive role-models and don’t believe in their purpose, potential or equal value to others. If this problem is not solved, it will result in unemployment and unemployability; unbroken cycles of poverty leading to youth anarchy and lack of citizen agency; and rising risk behaviours leading to an unsustainable health and education burden.”
Bongani Tsotetsi, a Peer Educator (young person enrolled in the gold Programme) from Gauteng, says that since joining the gold Programme, he has made better life choices, “Most of the time I ended up feeling pressurised by my peers and partaking in whatever was being done. I ended up cutting off some of the friends I had who were showing signs of partaking in bad habits and I kept those friends who had an elevated level of discipline so that I’ll be pressurised into doing positive things.
I decided to make a change in my life when I had joined gold-youth as a Peer Educator. I want to better myself in every aspect possible. I’ve started reading a lot and spending more time indoors and I feel my mental health has improved. I feel others around me have started showing respect towards me. I’m very proud of myself.
In the future, I want to be successful in whatever Industry I’m going to embark in. I believe in being dedicated and hard working to get the job done.”
Through the gold Peer Education Model, gold-youth embed peer leaders and their mentors into schools and communities, developing young people from being passive recipients of negative norms to proactive agents of positive change, who are empowering themselves and their peers to become the ethical and economically independent leaders of tomorrow.
Find out more about gold-youth on www.goldyouth.org.
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