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On a journey to find South Africa’s bestIf someone pointed out Anthony Farr to you in a crowd, say, at a cocktail party, and said he was an accountant, you would not find it hard to believe. He just has that look. Fairly nondescript, tall, with slightly balding sandy blonde hair. Dead average; the cynics and socially insensitive may even say boring.
The mean-spirited may even go so far as to call him milquetoast. And if you struck up a conversation with him, talked a bit about his background, you would feel quite confident that your initial impression was spot-on. A late 40s, upper middle-class white male, with good-to-great schooling, who studied a finance-related field at tertiary level and probably took his skills overseas, probably in the United Kingdom. And you would be right: Farr fits that bio more or less accurately. Except that he is in his late 30s. But you could be forgiven for that minor error, since he does have the look of an experienced professional.
By this point you would probably have written him off as unremarkable. Farr’s demeanour would not help mitigate your impression.
As your conversation progresses and he mentions his former career in merchant banking with Standard Bank, he would not seem all that impassioned by it himself.
Again, this is not that unusual a trait in the modern, corporate professional.
But then you would ask Farr the magic question: “So what are you doing now?” And it would all change.
“I’m the CEO of the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation,” he would say, with a sudden unexpected sparkle in his eye. Your interest piqued, you would dig a little deeper and discover that he “basically threw away” his university education and successful career to start the Starfish Foundation.
Having been returned to South Africa by his employer Standard Bank, Farr became much more aware of how desperate the situation on the ground was for many South Africans, and he had a personal awakening of sorts.
“I was exposed to the reality of the situation of some of these young children, and as passionate as I was about South Africa, I couldn’t see how we could become the great nation that all of us dreamt of if we had two million children who didn’t know what it meant to have a mother or a father,” he says.
The Starfish Foundation had its genesis in a London coffee shop, where Farr and a few friends decided to help those less fortunate than themselves. They started the charity as a tool to help them in their endeavour to help others.
It began initially as a volunteer activity, each member putting forward the time and money when they could. As Farr describes it, it was exciting seeing a committed group of young, professional South Africans contributing to the future of their country.
The charity had an encouraging and successful first few months, but it became clear that the volunteer system had a definite ceiling and would not be sustainable.
After much soul-searching, Farr abandoned his high-paying, successful job in merchant banking. He settled in the beautiful Valley of a Thousand Hills in KwaZulu-Natal, with the aim of first trying to understand what the issues on the ground actually were.
His rationale in investigating more in-depth the situation on the ground was to avoid “the kind of situations where well-intentioned people were wanting to help with their giving, but it wasn’t having a long-term impact. We wanted to apply the full force of our passion and our intellect to this challenge, rather than just giving money,” says Farr.
That insightful beginning has seen the Starfish Foundation become a majority charity, with chapters across the globe – all supporting almost 28 000 children across South Africa.
Farr’s involvement with the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation began in 2005, with a phone call from Allan WB Gray, the founder of Allan Gray Limited and Orbis Investment Management.
“I got very excited because I was hoping that we had some billionaire who was looking to work with Starfish,” Farr recalls.
Gray’s purpose, while altruistic, was a bit different and much more far-reaching. He had a vision to move beyond the typical charitable organisation’s aim of providing relief from poverty and hardship: his aim was to seek out the future leaders of the country so that they could effect real change in the long term.
And he had identified Farr as the man to fulfil that vision.
“It’s funny because I was thinking along a very similar line a few days before (that phone call),” says Farr.
While working at Starfish, he came to the conclusion that organisations such as these serve as a safety net – closing a gap where society had failed the individual. To really remedy the problems faced by the kids he was helping, change needed to happen on a much higher level.
“But I had no idea of what that meant or how to take that thought forward, particularly within the Starfish context,” Farr relates.
So it was fortuitous that while he was wrestling with that question, Gray would seek him out.
As the CEO of the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation, Farr has taken on the bold task of identifying and nurturing a future generation of South Africans by giving them access to high-quality education.
But it goes much further than offering underprivileged South Africans the schooling opportunities they might not otherwise have had. Farr is no less than a modern Chiron looking to instruct the future shapers of our nation – as he puts it, “the high-impact individuals who actually change the world”.
Farr is, essentially, on a journey to find the future Nelson Mandelas, Nikola Teslas, Christiaan Barnards, Wright Brothers, Mozarts, Marco Polos and Mark Shuttleworths of the world.
But this begs the question: How does the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation actually plan to do this?
“We believe that if we find the right people – if we give them the right education, the right opportunities, the right skills experience and then ultimately the right funding – they can have an explosive impact on the future of our country,” says Farr.
With that in mind, the Foundation has a programme whereby it actively goes into all communities – both affluent and destitute – and interviews young people; as best as it can, it tries to identify the ones with the potential to effect long-term positive change.
“We find youngsters at the end of their primary school who have amazing potential. Even at the age of 12, some of these kids walk into an interview and just blow you away with their sense of what is possible in their lives and what impact they want to have,” says Farr. “Yet, because of their circumstances, they would never be able to.”
Once these kids have been identified, “we put them in the best schools in the country with all the support that they need to succeed and achieve,” he says. “That transition puts them onto an entirely transformative academic trajectory.”
Interestingly, the Foundation does not only focus on the obvious academic lines such as maths, engineering, medicine, law and financial systems. There is a holistic view: the arts and social sciences are recognised as relevant for a community’s well-being.
Farr explains that the Foundation is making an attempt to do more than simply ensure a bright economic future: “We have Humanity students in there who are activated by issues of ethics and philosophy and politics. They shift the conversation in the group around things that are actually relevant (to people on the ground).”
The flagship programme of the Foundation is the Alan Gray Fellowship, “where we literally scour out the nation” in search of individuals who have a real passion and sense of purpose and vision for the country.
Farr and his team correspond with literally hundreds of schools from all corners of the country, sifting through thousands of applications in an attempt to find up to 100 individuals a year who would benefit from a university education.
As a show of the Foundation’s belief in taking the long view, once these fellows actually graduate for university, those who conceive innovative, entrepreneurial ideas can be assured that the money to fund those ideas will be available to them.
Graduates of the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation programme are automatically eligible for consideration to receive venture capital financing from E2 – which is essentially a venture capital firm that works in conjunction with the Foundation – should they, at any point in their lives, decide to start a business or social entrepreneurial venture.
In effect, Farr and his benefactor Gray have taken a gamble. There is no guarantee that what they are doing will succeed. But Farr explains: “History shows that it’s actually a few individuals who are going to make that contribution (that changes the world).”
And it is Farr’s mission to ensure individuals with that potential are give the opportunities to succeed.
By this point, you would not even have realised that you have been completely taken in with this “boring white accountant”. His passion and enthusiasm has overtaken you. The subdued, soft-spoken nature of the man could not have been further from the truth.
Which is not unlike Farr’s mission itself: to look beyond the surface of South Africa’s youth and give them the opportunity to answer a magic question that will change everything. ▲
Zaid Kriel
