Equip African Teens to Succeed

Happy Holidays from Alexandra, Khayelitsha, and Soweto, South Africa! Our Net Buddies recently finished their school year strong and confident because of the many hours of extra help and resources you gave them throughout their journey. This is Infinite Family’s last report on this project because your generosity has fully funded the support our Net Buddies needed for this period - THANK  YOU!

In 2023, you strengthened Infinite Family's largest graduating class ever – 17 Net Buddies completed their 12th-grade exams and are now awaiting their results. The success of these 17 students highlights what a tragedy it is that 6 out of 10 of their peers, without the support you provide, drop out before 12^th grade.

Throughout this project, you supported 616 South African teens and provided:

• Over 36,000 weekly mentoring sessions where there are very few role models for how to succeed in the 21st-century workforce;

• Eight years of daily access to computers and internet in the most marginalized communities where there were no technology alternatives; 

• More than 60,000 meals and critical cleaning and safety supplies in Alexandra, Khayelitsha, and Soweto during Covid lockdowns, and

• Hooded sweaters for all our Net Buddies during several extra frigid South African winters.

This year alone, you prepared more than 180 teens via 2,300+ mentoring sessions and safe spaces and technology for 4,800+ hours of homework, research, and college applications! At their step-up ceremonies, each one declared that their mentors inspired them to apply to university programs in professions that they didn’t know were available to them including engineering, medicine, law, and finance. Here is a link to a lovely voice note our Net Buddy, Lesedi, left us after she and her peers took their entrance exams in the LaunchPads you make possible. And here is one we received yesterday (yes, yesterday!) from one of our alums, Happy, in college.

If you are not already receiving our monthly newsletter, I welcome you to sign up here to receive our graduates’ exam results in late January. And I hope you will continue to support our younger Net Buddies when they start their studies again next year via our next GlobalGiving project.

Thank you again for your support for all of our Net Buddies during this project. Because you sustained them throughout their turbulent teen years, our Net Buddies are showing they can and will succeed in school, work, and life!

Deeply grateful that you are an important part of our Infinite Family,

Amy

Links:

• Lesedi is Grateful to Complete Her University Entrance Exams
• Happy Reports on Living Independently and Attending College
• Sign Up for Our Newsletter to See Students' Results in January