Video Mentoring
“My Mentor helped me to be more responsible and strong. In the States, they call this kind of person a TOUGH COOKIE.”
The Most Important Thing Teens Need to Succeed: 1 Supportive Adult
South African teens must navigate a challenging and perilous landscape every day, with little adult help or guidance. They are surrounded by extreme poverty and violence that creates the worst kind of crippling stress: Toxic Stress.
Decades of research confirm that the most common predictor of overcoming childhood adversity and learning to manage stress is “at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive adult.”
Knowing one adult is on your side means the difference between learning to be resilient, resourceful, responsible and building a better future – or defensively shutting down, giving up, dropping out and reinforcing expectations of failure and learned helplessness.
Via computers and the Internet, video mentoring unleashes a new global resource: the experience of adult volunteers worldwide to motivate education performance and career and life success in South African teens.
Infinite Family provides the technology, infrastructure, vetting systems, training, monitoring and evaluation, skills development resources and real-time support to connect the invaluable gift of one supportive adult” where it is needed most and delivers a truly transformational and sustaining impact.
Exceeding expectations, including their own since 2013, 93% of Infinite Family’s 12th grade mentees have qualified as First Generation college and university students — and then carried forward the lessons from this earned success into formal sector jobs.
Net Buddy Mentee Thanks Video Mentor
“My Mentor made me see how the decisions I make now can affect me later.”
How Our Model Works
Infinite Family addresses the unique set of challenges that South African teens face.