Shine Volunteers share their experiences.

FROM JENNY
When I retired as a remedial teacher a few years ago, I was introduced to the Shine Centre as a possible venture where I could be of some use. My experience has enabled me to give assistance with the children who need to have assessments done in order to plan strategies for their learning. I feel I have been able to be of assistance by working with the children who have been assigned to me, specifically with their literacy skills. It has truly been my pleasure to share my knowledge of teaching reading, spelling, creative writing, and language skills with them. We have learnt together and we have had fun.

This has been such a learning experience for me as I am now working with children from a totally different background from those attending the privileged school from which I retired. They have taught me so much about the difficulties of their daily lives - having to get up very early to be transported to school; the battle to make ends meet and, from most of them, the incredible motivation to get an education.

FROM LEORA
I have been involved with this amazing project for about 9months now and I can say that working with everyone at Shine has been one of the most rewarding projects that I have had the privilege to be involved with.

We have a major problem in education with the English literacy and failure rate in our schools.
The brilliance of Shine is that Maurita - a few years ago – so cleverly pre-empted this impending disaster and in her quiet way started the amazing concept of Shine.

I think that everyone who volunteers at Shine realizes very soon that they can make a difference if not to one child’s life, to a few children’s lives and therefore to the greater community.

At Shine I feel that if we work with these children and help them to develop their own self- respect and self -esteem, we may assist them in achieving just the smallest of their hopes and dreams.

The Literacy Hour is a very interesting new addition to the one on one working with the children as it endeavours to work with larger groups and thus spread the net of the allocated time involvement with the pupils.
It is an hour of intense working, which is always a great challenge to the group of 4 volunteers involved with the project.
It is a fantastic sense of achievement when we realize that as novice volunteers we have the ability to stimulate the imagination of the children during the reading and story-telling sessions so that when they are tasked with writing their own stories they are stimulated and confident to put pen to paper.

It is an honour to be involved with the volunteer work at Shine and each week I eagerly await that beautiful and knowing shine on some child’s
face which I know will lighten my week and perhaps their future.

FROM JEFF
I have worked at the Shine Centre for almost a year and have found it to be a wonderfully rewarding experience on a number of levels.

It is intellectually stimulating to find ways to get the best out of the children’s’ abilities, Each child has their own level of reading, and whether one is working in a group situation with a number of children, or one-to-one on an individual basis, the work is challenging, exciting, sometimes tiring, but always fun.

It is also emotionally fulfilling to work with children who are so keen to improve their reading. When one considers how deprived most of them have been of reading material due to their disadvantaged home background, their enthusiasm to improve themselves is often amazing. Many of them come to the Shine Centre as often as possible, even when they aren’t supposed to be there. It is obvious that they find the Centre and the volunteers to be helpful and supportive in a way far beyond merely being a way to improve their reading. It is a source of comfort and joy to them.

I do not find it strange that the children feel this way as the Centre is such a friendly place to be working in. The volunteers are from varying backgrounds and of a number of different nationalities. This, in itself, makes for a stimulating experience for a volunteer. The friendliness of everyone, and their obvious desire and dedication to make a difference to the lives and life-chances of the children is infectious.

I knew from the start that the Shine Centre would be a place where I could contribute and my efforts would be rewarded. Such dedication and enthusiasm is bound to succeed. One never feels that one’s efforts are wasted at the Shine Centre. I felt from the start that it was a programme that could be of benefit in a great number of primary schools in the Western Cape, given the country’s poor literacy levels.

It gave me great delight to read in the latest Shine Centre newsletter that there was an improvement in Grade 6 literacy from 48% to 78% in only two years. That achievement is phenomenal by any standards, and proof that the system works; it is wonderfully stimulating and rewarding for both volunteers and the children