Join Our Global Mentoring Movement

Net Blazers are the young men and women of Infinite Family who have graduated from high school, (bringing their formal relationship with us to a close) and gone on to pursue the life goals they’d set themselves. As you’d imagine, our Alumni hold a very dear place in our hearts and their links with us, and their mentors, often continue long after they’ve found their way in the world.

Lebohang Mofokeng from Soweto was among our earliest Net Buddies and joined our program back in 2010, at a particularly vulnerable time in his young life. He had just lost his mother, and he and his younger sibling were being supported by their older sister, who was forced to give up her dreams of studying to take care of them.

3 Video Mentors and 15 years later, he’s thriving, in a leadership position at a digital solutions business and giving his older sister the same gift she gave to him – an education to help her attain the better future she wants and deserves. 

As so many of our Net Buddies and Net Blazers do, Mofokeng credits the support of his mentors for helping him through some tough times and encouraging him to stay strong and focused.  He took the time to write about his mentorship journey for us.

"When I joined Infinite Family’s mentorship program, I was lost.  I was in my early teenage years and starting my life at Tsogang Sechaba High School in Soweto. I was so excited to be there but had just lost my mother and was feeling hopeless.

I met Infinite Family at the lowest point of my life but it helped me to find myself: my strength, my abilities and direction at a time when I really needed it, because it was going to be easy to go into drugs or a life of crime from a young age.

My first mentor was Shannon Murray and we had a great relationship from March 2010 - July 2011. She introduced me to her family and we would always speak of how she loved Africa. She was in a wheelchair after being diagnosed with a terminal illness but had always wanted to come and visit. So she expressed the wish that upon her death her ashes would to be scattered on top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania so as to serve as a sense of closeness, especially for me since I am based in Africa.

Following Shannon’s passing I was paired with Michael Jarrell in August of 2011 for a short time. I felt like we had met before our time because, at some point, I felt like I needed a brother but he had applied to be a volunteer at Doctors Without Borders and, unfortunately, when his application was accepted he had to leave ASAP. However we still keep in touch on social media from time to time.

Then came Amy. Oh Mom!! She saved me. May of 2012 was the beginning of our relationship, which would even see her coming to South Africa to visit me. I was at a point of giving up everything and I remember that after our first VC, I came out with a big smile, after listening to my mentor (who was in her 40s at the time) speak so passionate about her family, life and career.

Essentially, Amy played a big role in building me to be the man I am today. We always had informative VCs. We spoke about life, family, school, career, all the differences between the US and SA, and I always came out so fulfilled and charged up.

Our official mentor-mentee relation ended in August 2014 but we have kept in touch ever since, celebrating birthdays and Christmas every year. Even though she is miles away I barely feel the distance because I know she is one text away. Amy is family, Amy is mom and she is always there for me.

There’s a quote that says, “No individual raindrop ever considers itself responsible for the rain” and that speaks of the collective work done by all my mentors in empowering me and helping to shape and build me into the man I have become.

I am currently serving as a Team Leader in a digital solutions company. I have been working in the customer service and satisfaction space for 11 years now and I must say it has also played a role in helping me come out of my shell and express myself better. It has also given me the privilege of affording my sister an opportunity to go back to school in order to fulfil the dreams she gave up to be a mother to us." ~ Lebohang, Net Blazer

Lebohang is just one example of the life-changing impact your support creates week by week, video conversation by conversation, life milestone after life milestone. Your investment in our teens inspires them to work harder than they ever thought they could, to look beyond their current circumstances and to create futures full of opportunity and success. As you can see by Lebohang's description above, the teens you launch also give back and lift up those around them.

We are truly grateful you are part of our Infinite Family!

Amy Stokes

Founder, President and CEO

PS. I welcome your questions, especially about how to get more engaged with our Net Buddies. Please email me at amy.stokes@infinitefamily.org.

Links:

• Check out our website.
• Share Lebohang's story with your friends and family.
• Hear what our Net Buddies say on YouTube

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 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 part of our Infinite Family,

Amy

Links:

• Lesedi Completes Her University Entrance Exams
• Happy Describes Life on Her Own as a College Student
• Sign Up for Infinite Family's Newsletter