The Shine Centre
WORDS CAN CHANGE WORLDS
Our Vision is to create a nation of readers
Our Mission
Through community involvement and partnerships and using effective innovative and measurable practices, Shine aims to inspire South Africa to achieve our vision of a nation readers.
Our Values
RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
We uphold the values that all people should be treated equally and with dignity as is reflected in South Africa’s bill of rights.
RESPONSIBILITY:
We are invested in our duty to improve the future of literacy south africa.
INTEGRITY:
Our actions methods, measures, principles and outcomes will be consistent, truthful and transparent.
TRUST:
We aim to be sincere and truthful in all our working practices.
COLLABORATION:
We build partnerships with those who share a common purpose.
What Shine does
Shine runs five flagship centres in schools with strong infrastructure, committed staff, and previously disadvantaged parents, who choose to pay high transport costs from township areas in order to provide their children with what they believe to be a better education.
At the end of Grade 1, all of the children are assessed by Shine. We then offer a multi-sensory intervention programme twice weekly to those Grade Two and Grade Three children who are not reading at the appropriate grade level. We make sure that the children have appropriate reading material to take home. Most of the children on our programme have improved their reading age, some by up to three years.
We pair each child, who needs intensive support, with a trained volunteer who serves as their learning partner, and together, they work through the Shine Language and Literacy Programme. The programme consists of four parts: shared reading, paired reading, 'have a go' writing, and word play.
Individual attention is vital; it also assists us in building up a detailed profile of each child. This profile includes tracking their learning behaviour and reporting on their physical and emotional status.
We have also developed an Outreach Programme to support other schools and businesses in creating their own Shine models.
How Shine Started
In 2000, Maurita Glynn Weissenberg, an experienced primary school remedial teacher, established the Shine Centre in response to a need she identified while offering voluntary remedial support to second language children at the Observatory Junior School in Cape Town. She saw that the school would benefit greatly from a structured, early intervention, educational support programme.
Why Shine Centres are needed
- The average class in South Africa contains forty-plus children of greatly varying reading ages
- A significant percentage of children are two to three years below the class average in reading ability
- The language of instruction is the child's second or third language
- Continual test failures and poor results lead to low self-esteem
- children with learning disabilities such as dyslexia receive minimal remedial support and no other specialist support
- Most parents are from low-income economic groups and cannot provide extra support
- Teachers are overwhelmed and need support.
