Liverpool Regional High School. Photo credit Ed Halverson

The annual Liverpool Regional High School scholarship fundraiser is marking 25 years of providing money for graduates to attend post-secondary school.

What started as a dinner and auction moved online during the pandemic and has been breaking donation records ever since.

Last year, organizers raised over $33,000, smashing through their $22,000 goal.

This year they’re challenging themselves and the community to come up with $35,000.

Fundraising committee member Pierre Losier says organizers considered returning to an in-person format but decided staying online offered benefits that couldn’t be ignored.

“What we found is with the online auction format it provides more than just a one-day event. It provides more opportunities for folks to participate in the auction,” said Losier. “We start in the first of May and go through the month into June until we’ve gone through the different lots of auction. So, it’s a different format but it increases our participation and as a result also increases the funding.”

The committee is composed of parents, teachers and most importantly, students.

“They are broken down in smaller groups with a mentor committee parent and they will go and canvas the community for donations of either items to be sold at auction or some financial donations to the committee,” said Losier.

The auction is held on the LRHS 2023 Scholarship Fundraiser Facebook page.

Items up for auction are displayed as posts and bids can be made in the comments.

Losier says given the generosity of the community they could surpass the set goal of $35,000.

“Our community, year after year, just shows amazing support for this program and we’re confident that will continue on.”

Each year, about a third of the graduating class receive $1,000 awards from the scholarship fund to support their post-secondary schooling.

In the 25 years the auction has been running, over 400 students have received around $500,000 towards their continuing education from the LRHS Foundation.

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Rick and Liz Carten. Contributed by Rick Carten

Beginning this June, graduates living in the North Queens Community School District can get help paying for their post-secondary education.

A new trust has been established by the John Cormac Carten Foundation which will award up to $1,000 USD to any student who meets the eligibility criteria.

Foundation trustees Rick and Liz Carten named the fund in honour of Rick’s great-great-grandfather John Cormac Carten who emigrated from Ireland to Liverpool in the 1830s.

Rick Carten, who lives in Virginia, says he feels a connection to North Queens and wanted to do something for the people living there.

“My wife and I do not have any children,” said Carten, “so this was my way of passing on some of my good fortune to my ancestral homeland.”

Carten has been looking into his roots and learned his grandfather prospered in the shipping trade before moving to Halifax in the 1850s.

The elder Cormac had a dozen children and many of his eight daughters married local men with family names that are familiar in North Queens such as Baxter, Devenney, Ennis, McBride, and Nixon.

The last Carten descendent, Thomas Carten ran a general store in South Brookfield from around 1933 until his death in 1960.

Rick Carten says the John Cormac Carten Foundation is modelled after the highly successful J.D. Shatford Memorial Trust which has benefitted over 1,000 students around Hubbards for the past 60 years.

The scholarships are open to any students living in the North Queens Community School catchment area, regardless of if they attend that school so long as they graduate and can show they’ve been accepted at a university or college.

The same student can receive an award from the foundation up to four times during their post-secondary studies.

Students can apply through their guidance councillors and through the John Cormac Carten Foundation website.

Rick Carten is hopeful he will have the opportunity to attend the graduation ceremony at NQCS this June to meet some of the prospective recipients.

“I want to make sure that no one gets left behind who really deserves and qualifies for a scholarship,” said Carten. “I think it’s really important for them to at least have that opportunity to follow their dreams and their passions.”

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Liverpool Regional High School. Photo credit Ed Halverson

An online fundraiser for graduates at Liverpool Regional High School collected 50 percent more than organizers had hoped.

The LRHS Scholarship fundraiser volunteers received $33,627 in donations, blowing through the goal of $22,000 set for the class of 2022.

Scholarship fundraising committee chairperson Heather Stevens says although the annual fundraiser has been held online since the pandemic hit in 2020, they really seemed to find their stride this year.

Stevens says she and the seven parent volunteers worked together to mentor the 44 participating students.

“They were in charge of delivering letters to businesses or craftspeople or whoever they may know that may have items to donate to the auction. So it was all up to the kids to go out, introduce themselves, explain what they were there for and receive donations,” said Stevens.

Students collected 221 items that were then divided over a series of 12 online mini auctions to raise $22,742.

Stevens says organizers tried to incorporate some of the fun aspects of the annual live auction fundraiser into the online effort.

‘The one thing that the kids missed is, the kids that are on the auction would go that night and they would dress up and they would sort of be the Vanna Whites for the night and they would display the items,” said Stevens. “How we did it this year is we took photos of the grads with their items and would say a little blurb. For example, my son, this is Noah Stevens, he’s holding this donation from so and so and he’ll be going off to Dalhousie next year. We wanted the people to see where the money was going.”

In addition to the online auction the community stepped up to donate $5,925 in cash.

A challenge for LRHS alumni to donate and vote on which LRHS school they felt was better, the old one or the new one, raised $905 (the old school won).

And a pair of diamond earrings worth $1,150 donated by Reynolds Pharmasave and Pirates Cove was raffled off to raise another $4,055.

The money raised will now be turned over to the Liverpool Regional High School Scholarship Foundation.

A committee will review how many eligible students have applied for scholarships and determine how much each student will receive.

Even though the last of her three children is graduating this year, Stevens says she will likely stay on to help with the fundraiser again next year.

She says her team built on the success of last year’s volunteers and she hopes to see the legacy continue.

Reported by Ed Halverson 
E-mail: edhalversonnews@gmail.com
Twitter: @edwardhalverson

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