profile for the winner of the Africa Expo 2019

Name: Susannah Farr

Nationality: South African 

Title of Innovation: Peer to peer Systemic Scale 

Number of years implemented: 2

Category: Top 3 (1st winner)

Problems being solved: Half of young people in Sub-Saharan Africa, the largest part of the population, are born into poverty, growing up in communities that offer little hope. Far from having ethical role-models, they often don’t believe that they have purpose, potential nor equal value to others. Resulting in: Youth un-employability and unemployment; Unbroken cycles of poverty fuelled by crime, orphanhood and increasing youth anarchy and lack of citizenship; Endemic youth risk behaviour(eg HIV; teen pregnancy; substance abuse; gender violence) leading to a growing unsustainable health and education burden. Africa’s hope lies in investing in disenfranchised youth.

Description of innovation:Gold-youth, an award-winning organization with an evidence based solution, is creating a movement to embed long-term peer role models/ mentors into all schools and communities, changing the system of youth education and upbringing in Africa. We’re transforming the role of youth from being passive recipients of negative norms to proactive social and economic change agents who assume the role of empowering themselves and their peers to lead tomorrow. Our theory of change is supported by rigorous evaluation, demonstrated by results. A digital training suite of resources and tools, Peer2Peer, has been designed as a DIY product for scalability of the good practices associated with the gold Peer Education Model, available online, through the Teachable platform, as a ‘Digital Peer Education How To” with supporting guides & videos’.

The Innovation tackles the complex social dynamics of poverty and its impact on education and youth development by increasing knowledge and skills that enable youth to challenge the determinants hindering their social behavior, education and future opportunities.

Teachers and youth use the digital course, content and videos to implement peer education programmes with adolescents and tweens at grassroots. Peer Educators are taught to model positive decision-making and educate their Peers to make positive choices, strengthen their school work and maximize community impact. We’re developing a complimentary e-learning version of our accredited ‘How to implement peer education’ course.

Unique outcomes and Impact: Through Peer2Peer we have packaged the key curriculum and lessons from the gold Model’s 15 year track record, with concrete results in social behaviour change, improved education and job creation across 123 communities. This digital/print toolkit has gone live in 2019 to serve multiple stakeholders, in their context. In a short time, its easy availability on the Teachable platform, has enabled youth and schools from four countries to access best practices, training manuals and videos, enabling them to implement structured peer education programmes. Approximate beneficiary reach in May 2019 will be 3840, and uptake is increasing.

Replication and Sustainability :Peer2Peer was designed for systemic scale, leveraging the best practices from the gold Model packaged into a tested DIY ICT product/ training suite for wide use by most crucial possible replicators (other CBOs, education system/government) and available for open dissemination. Our social enterprise business model allows for sustainable ongoing refinement, and improved scale, supported by on demand training and consulting services. Free licenses for government and NGOs have been successfully piloted. Peer2Peer is part of our system change rapid scale up plan for the quality assured gold Model as well as DIY Peer2Peer across Africa.