The town of Gull Lake has joined Swift Current in adopting the Safe Place - Youth Certified initiative.

It's a certification for people working with youth that involves education about working with young people, training and a background check.

Swift Current has had the initiative in place now for a little over a year and recently surpassed the mark of 1,000 certified individuals.

Tim Marcus is a Safe Places committee member and the Swift Current chief administrative officer. He said it's good to have another community on board.

"They began discussing it internally as some time ago as something that they would like to do," said Marcus. "They did have people in their community that volunteered in Swift that did become Youth Certified. And they believed that would be a good thing for their community. Their council discussed it amongst themselves and with the community and decided to move forward. We`re very happy that they`ve decided to join in."

Included in the certification is online training, a $30 fee (which is sometimes waived by the Safe Places committee for organizations like non-profits) and a background check.

The certification is portable, so it carries over from community to community.

"For the people that do hold the Safe Places card, it allows them to seamlessly move between volunteer organizations without having to go through the whole process of criminal record checks and everything. It does streamline, and it does make a lot of people aware of keeping their youth safe in our community."

Marcus said that Safe Places is in talks with other communities about them joining Swift Current and Gull Lake in adopting the initiative, but couldn't comment on which communities they are.

Marcus said totals aren't in yet, but some money raised through the MNP Broncos Alumni Golf Classic back on July 29 will be donated to Safe Places to help cover the fee for organizations without a lot of funds.