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World Youth Skills Day Highlights Strategic Mentor Role
This Friday, July 15, is World Youth Skills Day and we couldn’t be more proud of our Net Buddies. They work year round to build their skills in 5 vital impact areas: Education, Career Preparation, Technology Literacy, Communication, and Life Skills. Their hard work pays off every December when their final exam grades are announced: 100% of Infinite Family Net Buddies mentored through 12th grade qualify for advanced education – nine out of ten qualify for Top Tier universities! As mostly first generation tertiary students, our teens create these opportunities for themselves by working extremely hard without fully understanding how their hard work will pay off – this takes guts and trust!
But the Infinite Family Team also wishes to take this opportunity to focus on the worldwide group of online mentors who invest their time and experience in African teens. Who are they? They are men and women of all ages and stages from all over the world who recognize the power of connection and volunteer their time to help our Net Buddies fulfill their potential and achieve independence.
In addition to our Net Buddies accomplishments, a recent tragedy in a neighboring province underscores the incalculable value of the work our online mentors do each week. On June 26, in the Eastern Cape Province, 21 young people died in a terrible and mysterious tavern accident. The details are still being investigated, but we do know that the youngest victim was only 13 years old and most of the rest were also younger than the legal drinking age of 18.
Many questions remain about the devasting evening, including the most obvious one: how and why were the minors in a tavern in the early hours of a Sunday morning? Despite the fact that the minor-aged teens should never have been allowed inside the tavern, local residents quickly shared their opinions on why the students had gone in the first place. “If there were youth institutions, programmes available for young people, this incident [would] never have happened. Some of the reasons these children go to taverns is because they do not have anything to do, there is no sports field for these kids, the [meeting] hall we have has no electricity, we do not even have a library for these kids,” said Nomthunzi Mbiko, a local resident.
Unlike the students whose loss has left an enduring wound on their East London community, Infinite Family Net Buddies have a place to go after school to do their homework, fulfill their curiosity, and be part of a community that keeps them focused on building skills that will make them successful in school, work and life. We thank YOU, our Infinite Family, for investing what is most precious – your time, talent and treasure – in African teens, for giving them countless reasons to invest in themselves and make good decisions. |
