After spending eighteen months as a volunteer offering academic support to historically disadvantaged learners at Observatory Junior School, it became evident to Maurita Weissenberg that there was a need to provide the school with a full-time educational programme. She set up a trust called the School Partners Trust with the aim of looking at community and business collaboration. A decision was made to copy a project launched in the UK called Education Business Partnership. Thus the Shine Centre came to be.
The average class at the Observatory Junior School contains forty-three learners of greatly varying maths and reading ages. A significant percentage of these children are two or three years below the class average in reading and mathematics and often the language of instruction is the learner’s second or third language. The results are continual poor results and test failure leading to low self-esteem. In class learners with learning disabilities such as dyslexia receive minimal remedial support and usually no other specialist support since most parents are from low-income groups and cannot provide this.
The Shine Centre aims to help learners in these situations. Besides the Reading Partners Initiative where volunteers are paired up with individual children, two of the volunteers (retired librarians) have also re-opened the school library which had been closed for a few years. Today the library is open to children and classes on a daily basis.
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