Students in Swift Current will have a chance to keep up their learning throughout the summer, thanks to a new program from the United Way.

The Summer Success program is in partnership with the Holy Trinity School Division, Chinook School Division, and the Knight Automotive Group and gives students a chance to improve literacy over the summer.

Starting Monday and lasting until August 2, All Saints and Ecole Centennial Schools will have 30 students back in the classroom. The students range from Kindergarten to Grade 3. The students and three teachers will participate in the 10-day course that will see two groups of 15.

Stacey Schwartz, the Swift Current literacy coordinator for the United Way Regina, said this program has taken place in Regina for the past four years and has been a great success.

"We've been able to witness the success of the program and the measurable outcomes," she said. "The teachers that have participated with it as well as the students have spoken very highly of it."

The goal of the program is to stop the 'summer slide' that students see after the summer break.

"We do tracking and data. We will see the progress and the outcome, but it's all at the end of the day to address the effects of the summer slide that happens in every centre, every school," she said. "You speak to any teacher, and they will speak to that. It really is about expanding their literacy levels in order for them when they are done in June and go back in September that they can at least be making progress going into the fall rather than the teachers spending two months just trying to get them back up to where they were when they left in June."

This year's program is just a pilot program, but if all goes well, Schwartz said that they would want to see it continue.

"Seeing how it goes, seeing if we need to make changes to make it a better fit for our community," she said. "We have a max of 15 kids per camp. We would love to see more than two camps in our community. We love to see it expanded in other schools within the area, but that also comes with a cost for us to be able to offer this quality program free to students participating. We are looking for potential partners and investors, that are wanting to come on board and see this program expanded."

Schwartz added that this is the first program since the Swift Current United Way was closed down and centralized with United Way Regina to be offered in Swift Current.

"In witnessing the success of programs in Regina I was optimistic that over time our decision to close our doors in order to centralize and be really strategic about where we put our time and our energy going forward, that it was going to open doors for better opportunities within our community," Schwartz said. "This is the first open doors for our community with Summer Success being able to come here."

The Summer Success will now expand to not only Swift Current but Weyburn and Moose Jaw.