Sunshine Association

Hope for children with disabilities

The Sunshine Association is a dynamic, progressive and innovative Non—Profit Organisation in the field of intellectual disability, offering diverse services at many levels. All developments and services offered by the organisation are a direct response to the needs identified in the communities.

What makes our organisation different is our passion for children with intellectual disabilities, a holistic approach and our dedicated staff compliment who go out of their way to better understand and service the special needs of individual children. Many children with disabilities fall outside of the system and in many communities the family is stigmatized and excluded from the community. In many circumstances the child is hidden away in fear of discrimination and ostracization. It is our firm belief that communities need to be educated: and awareness is created around intellectual disability and developmental delays, and the rights of these children to be part of community life and to be included.

Community development

The services offered by the Sunshine Association have developed over the years in response to the needs of communities and families served. The Sunshine Centre Association works within functions with a developmental model in partnership with families and communities. The model focuses on the child with disabilities and delays at the centre of a system encompassing parents, caregivers, siblings, volunteers and the community at large. This approach seeks to ensure the maximum functioning of the family and the system and the inclusion of the child with disabilities into the family, the community and society. The belief is that the system that is capacitated, supported and informed will provide a nurturing and supportive environment for the child with disabilities. This has certainly been evident in the work of the Sunshine Centre Association.
Our Services include the following:

Early Intervention Day care Programmes
- Toy library programme
- Home - based support
- Family support
- Youth and siblings programme
- Volunteer programme
- Income generating programme

Training Programmes
- START Early Intervention programme
- ECD Inclusion model
- Classroom / disability management
- Community Development