We believe in…

a just world for all beings, being good custodians of the planet and shining from within. We believe in the right to an education for all, to feel welcome and included, to be seen and heard. We believe in integrity, transparency, honesty, service, freedom and peace.

We acknowledge and pay respects to the traditional custodians of the lands and nations around Australia on which we run our workshops and business. We acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded – this land always was and always will be, Aboriginal land. We recognise the past atrocities against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of this land and that Australia was founded on the genocide and dispossession of First Nations people. We recognise the ongoing struggles of First Nations people in dismantling the colonial structures and policies that remain in place today.

Ensuring that students of all social, cultural, community and family backgrounds, and of all identities, and all abilities feel welcome is important to us. Shine from Within is LGBTQIA+ friendly.

We acknowledge that much of our work and resources have been created through the lens of our Director, Amanda Rootsey, a white, cis-gendered, able-bodied woman and that her experiences and lessons learned may be, and probably will be, very different to those of someone who holds a marginalised identity. As such, we are commited to investing time, money and energy unpacking privilege and working with anti-oppression consultants and educators to ensure we are more aware, more inclusive and are holding a safe space for all. This learning is never ending and we realise we’ll make mistakes along the way – we welcome feedback on how we can do things better and hold a more inclusive space as we continue to learn and implement changes. When mistakes are made we are committed to taking responsibility, apologising, rectifying the situation and repairing harm/damage as much as possible and taking action to ensure it doesn’t happen again. 

Our Commitment to our students

We are dedicated to providing a welcoming, nurturing, respectful, FUN space for all of our students to learn evidence-based, holistic, relevant life skills for the modern world. We approach our work with the belief that all people are already perfect and have what they need within. We celebrate them, encourage them, support them and hold space for them to realise this for themselves. We use stories, examples, different points of view, activities and discussions to bring the Shine from Within philosophy to life. Our facilitators, mentors and guest teachers come from a mentoring and life coaching background and our programs are designed to be used in a preventative way, not therapeutic. We are trained in recognising triggers and warning signs that a student may need more support from a counsellor, psychologist, or other health professional.

We are committed to the safety and wellbeing of all of our students, including children, and the protection of them from harm. To us, this extends past physical harm and actively working to ensure we are improving the wellbeing of our students. You can read all about our policies and procedures for managing risk and ensuring the safety of our students, as well as terms of enrolment, code of conduct, privacy policy and more here. 

Our Social Impact

We believe our impact is ever-evolving and are committed to continuing our learning and our service through a variety of ways. In the spirit of transparency we wanted to share our commitment with you and demonstrate how we’ve been actioning these with the following:

1. Committed to learning more and becoming more informed in the areas of social justice, feminism, body image and the body positivity movement and environmental impact. For example:
   1. Anit-oppression and inclusion consulting for the entire business with Sharyn Holmes
   2. Unpack Your Privilege and Anti-racism training for our Director and support trainer, also with Sharyn Holmes
   3. Cultural Awareness and Truth Telling course with The Wellbeing Connexion
   4. Trauma awareness masterclass with Nicole Keeber-Lewis
   5. Business masterclasses with Lena West, Staci Jordan Shelton, Desiree Adaway
   6. Whiteness at Work course with Desiree Adaway
   7. Gender consulting with Cameron Airen
   8. Body Positivity and Positive Body Image with Sabine McKenzie (masterclass provided to all of our youth mentors)
   9. Accidental Counsellor training with Human Connections
   10. Feminist Coach Academy certification 
   11. Books including: The Mentor by Jack Manning Bancroft; Meet Me at the Intersection edited by Rebecca Lim, Ambelin Kwaymullina; How Powerful We Are by Sally Rugg; Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown; White Tears/Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad, This Book is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewell; The Body is Not an Apology by Sonja Renee Taylor; Different, Not Less by Chloe Hayden; The Transgender Teen by STephanie Brill and Lisa Kenney; Gender Outlaws by Kate Bornstein (all amazing books and highly recommended!!).

We are committed to implementing what we’ve learned and ensuring these important discussions are had with staff, contractors, students and the rest of our Shine from Within community. 

1. Committed to listening to and raising the voices of marginalised groups through our social media channels, podcast, guest experts in our trainings, on our Youth Mentor Conference and business consultants.  
2. Committed to supporting social enterprises and working with suppliers with diverse ownership. For example:
   1. Our school-based curriculums are printed by Words with Heart, a social enterprise that fund education programs for women and girls. 
   2. Purchasing gifts for clients and students from indigenous artists, social enterprises and local businesses.
   3. At least 80% of purchases and hiring of services are from businesses that are majority-owned by women or individuals from underrepresented populations.
3. Committed to donating a percentage of revenue to not-for-profits and causes we believe in, including the following causes and organisations:
   1. Sister’s Inside
   2. One Girl
   3. SeedMob 
   4. Murals for Change
   5. Breathe Project’s New Zealand service trip
   6. Indigenous X
   7. Dominion 
   8. Victorian Women’s Trust
   9. AIME
   10. Asylum Seeker Resource Centre
   11. Save the Bears
   12. Farm Animal Rescue

   We are committed to donating the equivalent of 5% of revenues (or more) to charitable partners (including in-kind product donations).

4. Committed to providing payment plans for all events and trainings, as well as a number of ‘Pay What You Can’ places in our Youth Mentor Training to ensure we’re making this training accessible to those who would otherwise not be able to afford to join us or have marginalised identities. Approximately 20% of our Youth Mentor Training students join us on Pay What You Can applications.
5. Committed to ensuring our Youth Mentor Training is a truly global program, ensuring support for youth is accessible to as many communities as possible. So far we’ve had students join us from Zambia, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, France, UK, Belgium, Ireland, Canada, USA, Malaysia, China, Thailand, New Zealand, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Australia, Oman, Tanzania, Cayman Islands and Sweden.
6. Committed to volunteering a portion of our time and resources, where possible, to community organisations.
7. Committed to providing free and low cost resources, events and coaching opportunities to tweens, teens, parents and mentors. For example, facilitating a number of in-person workshops by gold coin donation each year for the local community, provided pro-bono 1:1 coaching to a number of students, provided pro-bono keynote speeches, provided scholarship positions in a number of our programs, and created a number of free downloadable PDFs for parents and mentors, blog posts, a podcast series and more. We have also worked with some community organisations to ensure students from marginalised backgrounds could access our events through community grants and sponsorships. We are also working on providing a partnering service, which links mentors who are in training with teens looking for pro-bono life coaching and mentoring.
8. Committed to ensuring our training programs are accessible to as many people with varying abilities as possible. Some of the ways we do this include: providing transcripts for all training videos in our Youth Mentor Training, providing live captions for all live calls and classes in our Online Academy and Youth Mentor Training, ensuring all PDFs and websites are screen-reader friendly, installing an accessibility add-on to our website, etc.
9. Committed to ensuring that any youth mentors we promote on this website or who facilitate classes in our Online Academy are equally as dedicated to providing an inclusive space for all by ensuring they have completed an implicit bias test, demonstrated their commitment to continue learning (and unlearning) about social justice issues and follow our strict Code of Conduct. We believe it’s imperative to do this work in order to hold a safe and nurturing space for today’s young folks and want to make sure anyone we promote is equally committed to our values.
10. Committed to working with and building long-lasting relationships with contractors who share our values. Some of the businesses we’re honoured to work alongside and who have donated time or resources to our programs include Kylie’s Professional Mineral Make Up and Everescents Organic Hair Care. Our administration and support trainer contractors have worked with us for many years. 
11. Committed to providing a gentle, empowering, socially-responsible working environment, including flexible working conditions for all of our admin contractors to work from home and choose when suits them to work around family, study, their health concerns, lifestyle and their other commitments.
12. Committed to ensuring our digital spaces are safe and free of bullying and discrimination. We protect people in our online programs from harm from each other through detailed Community Guidelines and Policies, ensuring that all participants in our private Facebook groups and on community calls have committed to upholding these guidelines. If breached, members are provided with feedback and, if necessary, removed from the group. 

Our Environmental Footprint

We’re dedicated to being as gentle as possible on the planet. We do this in a number of ways, including:

1. Providing editable PDF workbooks in our Youth Mentor Training and, where possible in our Online Academy, encouraging students to keep everything digitally, rather than printing.
2. For the things we must print, such as our school-based curriculum, we print these on recycled stock, using vegetable-based inks, in recycled cardboard binders (all printed by a social enterprise) and provide an online portal for all additional resources such as slideshows, playlists, etc (rather than provide a USB stick or CD).
3. We screen our suppliers, choosing to work with businesses with positive practices and policies in place, good governance and policies related to ethics and sustainability and source locally-made, eco-friendly, vegan supplies and gifts for our clients and students.
4. Ensuring all of our events are catered using 100% vegan ingredients (and organic where possible), supporting local growers, farmers and businesses.
5. Being a virtual business with all staff and contractors working from home except for when facilitating our in-person events. This reduces travel and resources such as electricity.
6. We have a written policy encouraging environmentally preferred products and practices in admin contractors’ virtual offices. (e.g. recycling) as well as a policy in place for the safe disposal of e-waste and other hazardous materials purchased for home offices.
7. Team members are also provided with a list of environmentally-preferred vendors for office supplies (though the majority of what we do and use is digital). 
8. Having systems in place to reduce our postage wherever possible, including not holding stock of any of our online store items or books – we ‘drop ship’ everything so that each order is sent directly from the manufacturer, cutting out the ‘middle-person’.
9. We dispose of hazardous waste, such as batteries, responsibly.
10. We bring in our commitment to the environment through discussions wherever possible, including in skincare and make up classes, fashion classes, money classes, food and wellness classes and more. There are also chapters such as How to be a Hero for Mama Earth in our best-selling book, Shine From Within; a teen girl’s guide to life.

Review Process

We’ll review these commitments at least once a year and continue to evolve our commitment to people, planet and animals.

We’re also kept accountable and have most of this independently reviewed as part of our B-Corporation Certification. 

If you have any queries about our impact or commitment, please email info@shinefromwithin.com.au 

Last updated: 31 September 2022