Programmers help initiative

I have been thinking about starting a voluntary initiative at the university I come from. I wanted to get together a group of students and professors and create a special team to support incipient programmers. I have thought that if we can help them by means of planned programming workshops, interactive forums, auditorium lectures, time reserved just to help them with their doubts, and a couple of other ideas, maybe we could see better programmers comming out the university. I have the theory that if we could work a bit harder with a few of them, we could really teach them the art of programming. The time spent in class is so short, and sometimes the kids have bad luck with the professors they get for a class (yeah, bad teachers do exist).

Do you believe that an initiative like this may succeed, really helping this kids or am I loosing my time?

I know I'm about 2 months late from the intial post, but by incipient programmers, do you mean newbie programmers or programmers who are struggling with the coursework?

In either case, I think forming some sort of support for programmers is a great idea. I definitely think this kind of program could succeed and you would not be wasting your time; it would, however, need to be carried through properly. If the instructors are voluntary, then you need to determine whether there are enough good programmers to make this effort effective. And of course, make sure the students are aware of support opportunities and that it's accessible.