Dear LinkedIn Community
Necessary Endings: I Learn to Live - Ngifundela Ukuphila
Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, I Learn to Live - Ngifundela Ukuphila was not able to raise the funds that would see our education programmes continue, as well as expand. We have had to make the difficult decision to retrench a significant number of our team.
Our intention is to continue operating our school Coding & Robotics Clubs (catering to approx. 120 children), as well as our Saturday Club (approx. 35 children), until October, with a skeleton staff. In November, schools usually start running their own extra lessons, so attendance of our programmes is irregular.
Although we are devastated, the last (almost) 14 years have been filled with incredible impact (as well as lessons learnt and challenges overcome), and it is this that we choose to remember, as this season of working with children in rural Zululand comes to an end.
I Learn to Live is not deregistering as an organisation, but will now take time to reconsider what the future of the organisation might look like. We have six team members who have active side-hustles that have the potential to become small businesses, and we would love to support them on this journey through Enterprise Development funding.
We are pleased at the progress that one of our recent YES Youth interns, Nomthandazo Chili, is making with her bakery business (because of ED funds), and we believe these other businesses could flourish with much needed support. They are businesses that meet the needs of the communities the team have been serving.
We'd like to thank every single person, corporate, church, and trust and foundation, that has encouraged us, supported us financially and materially, and prayed for us, over these years. Without you, we would not have gone from serving 3 beneficiaries to thousands.
#coding #robotics #nonprofit #newbeginnings
