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Project SHINE

SHINE stands for Students Helping In the Naturalization of Elders. This service learning program, conducted nationwide, pairs college students with elderly immigrant men and women, providing tutoring in civics education and English as a second language for the citizenship/naturalization exam.
While students have an opportunity to examine culture/ethnicity in America, legal & ethical issues, the roots of poverty in our communities, religion, and teaching techniques, they learn from and help empower those who are marginalized.

The program has over the years been funded by the Corporation for National Service, the US Department of Education, and Learn and Serve America.

In Hawaiʻi, SHINE operates as a partnership between faculty and students from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Kapiʻolani Community College, and Chaminade University. Each semester, students are recruited to participate as tutors in weekly 2-hour sessions with elderly immigrants who need assistance for a total of 10 weeks.

SHINE is one of our oldest service-learning projects, well organized, and almost entirely student-run, except for the coordinator of the project (and Director of Service Learning at Chaminade University), Candice Sakuda, who has been with the program since its beginning in 1996, when it was first started in corporation with the
local grassroots community organization, the Chinese Community Action Coalition. For more background information, please see: Chaminade Service Learning - Project SHINE

 

College students who participate as tutors receive credit through the classes offering SHINE as a service-learning project option. The tutees also benefit from learning US civics, as well as becoming more competent in reading, writing, and speaking the English language.

 

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Project Goals

  1. To tutor immigrants of Honolulu communities - to help them learn English and pass their citizenship exams . . . thus maintaining their quality-of-life.
  2. To promote inter-ethnic agency, community, and university collaboration.
  3. To raise the consciousness of college students concerning government policies toward immigrants and the “immigrant experience”.
  4. To promote and facilitate the empowerment of immigrants in Hawaiʻi.

 

Where We Are

SHINE takes place at Kalanihuia, 1220 Aʻala Street, located in Chinatown. We may also be running a small pilot program at the FILCOM (Filipino Community Center) in Waipahu, 94-428 Mokuola Street.

 

See the map and directions to our sites.

Chinatown: Kalanihuia.

Waipahu: Filipino Community Center.

 

More Information

Download the SHINE Fact Sheet (under Links)
See also:
Tutoring SHINE
Regarding the Waipahu pilot program, please contact Ulla Hasager at csssl@hawaii.edu

 

Project Coordinator

Candice Sakuda: (808) 735-4895 or csakuda@chaminade.edu

 

Links

SHINE Fact Sheet and Calendar

National SHINE: www.projectshine.org

 

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