Send a Hooded Sweater to Keep a Teen Warm

It happens. We’ve been let down at the last minute by a corporate partner that offered to fund the hooded sweaters we gift our teens each winter. No judgment. Circumstances change and the sponsor is as devastated as we are.  However, we can’t let our Net Buddies go cold and now need to raise $ 3,750 ASAP to order them in time for the chilly months ahead.  

If keeping a teen warm this winter also warms your heart, a donation of $25 will buy one top-quality sweater. And if you can put us in touch with a super generous corporate or private donor who might be prepared to step in and fund 150 of them, we’d really love to hear from you.

Democracy Isn't What It Used to Be

South Africa is preparing to go to the polls next week and the mood couldn’t be more different from the excitement of its first democratic election when Nelson Mandela led the African National Congress out of apartheid and into power in 1994.  

This time around, the electorate - of what is now described as a post-Rainbow Nation – is expected to show its discontent with the rate of progress over the last thirty years and return a vote that will unseat the ANC’s absolute majority for the first time.  

It’s a watershed moment.  Read More

Our LaunchPads Work Overtime

While our teens may be wrestling with their political consciences, they are perfectly clear-eyed about what they need to do to carve out their own future success.  How do we know?  Because, not only are they working hard in school and committed to their weekly video conferences with their mentors but they are also logging LOTS of hours in the Infinite Family Launch Pads over the weekend.  

It's a safe space for them to connect to the internet, and to each other. Each weekend they spend 35 hours there, doing homework, researching projects, preparing for presentations and revising for tests. Things they’d battle to do without the support of you, our Infinite Family community!  

Kudos to the Civic Leadership Project

Anyone who has spent even a small amount of time working with NGOs knows the challenge of getting through the endless admin.  It’s enormously time-consuming, and when it involves interacting with online portals (that seem to be needed for EVERYTHING these days), it can be incredibly frustrating!  Especially when the tech interface that’s supposed to make things quicker and easier comes with ZERO tech support …

So this is a shout-out to the Civic Leadership Project, which is dedicated to strengthening the capacity of communities and non-profit organisations like us.  After years of poor auditing advice and floundering around, looking for the simplest, most cost-effective ways to complete our IRS 900 form, we finally came across the CLP’s Form 990 Online.  Thanks to their very usable interface, we were able to input our information, let their back-end system convert everything into the right format, and send it to the IRS with very few bumps along the way! When we did have two small challenges, their support team came back to us within minutes with suggestions that really worked. Many thanks to this effective and dedicated civic-minded team for making what is usually onerous both easy and efficient.

Net Buddies and Video Mentors are the heart of our Infinite Family

Click here to see the Mentorship and Member Anniversaries we celebrate in May.

Thank you for being our Infinite Family

[Infinite Family is] Very helpful because [our teens] are now gaining skills they wouldn’t have without the programme, [like] learning to communicate with people outside our culture and [who] don’t even speak the same language as [we do]. It keeps them open-minded.  ~ A Net Buddy Parent