Welcome to Philly SHINE!
Project SHINE in Philadelphia is based at Temple University's Intergenerational Center. Volunteers of any age are welcome to join us as SHINE tutors. Philly SHINE partners with 13 community based organizations who serve older immigrants and their families to provide ESL services to the community. This partnership also includes faculty members who provide additional support to college student volunteers who may participate in SHINE as a service learning component.
Project SHINE has grown in the past thirty years from a local program to a national consortium of colleges and universities that create mutual learning experiences for volunteers and immigrant elders.
Health Literacy and Civic Engagement in Philly
SHINE has also expanded its scope to include Health Literacy and Civic Engagement of diverse communities in addition to general literacy and citizenship. SHINE's most recent community-based participatory research projects produced two research reports that included findings and recommendations on practice:
- Patient Listening, the Health Communication Needs of Older Immigrants
- Community Treasures, the Contributions of Older Immigrants and Refugees
These research projects also let to pilot projects that field testing the recommendations of these reports. Our current project on Health Literacy in partnership with AmeriCorps and Metlife Foundation is a program that combines the learnings on effective ways to promote health literacy skills and access to healthy aging practices and ways to engage diverse volunteers in meaningful roles that contirbute to their community.
AmeriCorps Year One Philadelphia Review
Tutor leadership roles
Philly SHINE has also expanded on the leadership roles that student volunteers play in our program. Our first student advisory team convened in the Fall of 2009 and created two primary goals:
- To improve the tutor experience
- To create a community of SHINE tutors.
Returning tutors may also play a role as site coordinators at our community partners, contribute to our newsletter, take photographs and develop our on-line resource library. If you are interested in working with Philly SHINE, please do not hesitate to contact us at our office. You may reach Program Coordinator, Jessica Kratzer at jessica.kratzer@templecil.org
