What is West End Neighborhood Summer Camp?

The West End Neighborhood Summer Camp is a summer camp that allows students the chance to continue academic, social, and character skills throughout the summer.

The summer camp was originally founded when several teachers from the Harmony-Emge School District and community members got together because there was a great need for serving children in the district during the months when school was not in session. Many of our children spend day after day at home with little to do and no academics.

We knew we needed to support our families; but how? We put our brains together and in the Summer of 2010 we had our first Roadrunner Summer Camp. It was a big success, but we came to the conclusion that we were still not doing enough to impact the community and we were charging the parents too high of a fee to help all students in the community.

Summer 2011 and 2012 once again was a huge success for HNCA. We were able to provide summer camp for 2 weeks out of the summer to 20 students. The students participated in field trips, academics, team building activities and character education lessons. We felt successful, but once again we wanted to do more! We wanted to affect the community as a whole not just our students. We wanted to provide MORE educational opportunities for our students and all children in our community throughout the summer, we wanted to provide meals for those children and we wanted camp to extend from 2 weeks to the whole summer.

So, we put our brains together, rested up a bit, and we put summer camp 2013 on hold. Then we pulled in our resources. That is when we were introduced to Signal Hill Neighborhood Association and from there a forever partnership was born!

Signal Hill Neighborhood Association helped us gain community support. Through their fundraising abilities and their community connections we were able to raise enough money to provide 40 students from both Harmony School Dist # 175 and Signal Hill School Dist # 181 entering 1st through 6th grade summer camp throughout the entire duration of the summer! This was the start of the West End Neighborhood Summer Camp 2014.

Our dream has been achieved and the lives of the students of the West End of Belleville will be forever impacted thanks to the community organizations, companies, and members who donated time and money to make this dream a reality! Thank you to everyone involved. We could not have done this without you!

Did you know?

• All young people experience learning losses when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer. Research spanning 100 years shows that students typically score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation than they do on the same tests at the beginning of the summer (White, 1906; Heyns, 1978; Entwisle & Alexander 1992; Cooper, 1996; Downey et al, 2004).
• Most students lose about two months of grade level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months. Low-income students also lose more than two months in reading achievement, despite the fact that their middle-class peers make slight gains (Cooper, 1996).
• More than half of the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income youth can be explained by unequal access to summer learning opportunities. As a result, low-income youth are less likely to graduate from high school or enter college (Alexander et al, 2007).
• We are making it our mission to ensure that all students have the opportunity to maintain academic success throughout the summer.