Some high praise is being given to summer camps in the province designed to get Aboriginal children reading more.
According to organizers, over 960 kids attended 23 camps in 25 communities in the province this summer.
This includes camps in Buffalo Narrows, La Ronge, Pinehouse, Sandy Bay and Uranium City.
Both the Northern Lights School Division and Ministry of Education are calling this year’s camps a success.
Sherry Campbell is the president of Frontier College, the group that has organized the camps since their inception three years ago.
Campbell says many children quit reading over the summer months or have trouble reading in schools.
She explains the camps give kids a fun place to read where they can grow more comfortable reading culturally-relevant materials.
Campbell adds the importance of community involvement in the camps can’t be overstated:
“The visitors and the elders that come to the camps, they’re the ones that bring the cultural colouring to the camp — the Native language words that we work into the curriculum and all of those fun things, as well as crafts.”
Over 15,000 free children’s books were sent home with the campers at the end of this year’s camps.