ACB’s White Soiree helps Crystal Beach graduates pay for school

Advancing Crystal Beach (ACB) raised money for student bursaries at its fourth annual White Soiree on Saturday.

The $100-a-ticket fundraiser at the Bertie Boating Club is the organization’s signature event that ACB president Scott Boumeester says answers a plain problem: some Crystal Beach graduates cannot afford post-secondary education.

“We’re just trying to do our own little piece, our own little bit, and wherever we can help, we’ll do whatever we can,” Boumeester told Fort Erie Radio.

Proceeds fund bursaries for graduates of Greater Fort Erie Secondary School (GFESS) and Lakeshore Catholic High School who live in Crystal Beach.

“We need these bursaries to allow them to pay for their schooling,” said Boumeester.

Those costs climbed steeply this year. The Ontario government announced last February it would lift a seven-year freeze on domestic tuition and cut the share of OSAP funding offered as grants from 85 per cent in 2018 to 25 per cent, requiring students to borrow the rest.

GFESS students walked out of class twice over those changes, first in March and again in May.

At GFESS’s class of 2026 graduation last month, the Advancing Crystal Beach Award went to Katie Potestio and Amani Coley, two of 263 students in a class that collected nearly $100,000 in scholarships, bursaries and awards.

Boumeester said the bursary program grew out of the organization’s existing work with young people, including its tourism hub on Erie Road which hires students during the summer supported by the Town of Fort Erie.

“Our youth is very, very important to us,” said Boumeester.

Five of ACB’s board members are under 35, a group Boumeester credits with driving the organization’s newer projects forward.

The group also runs programs on food insecurity and seniors’ health. Its monthly pop-up food markets support roughly 200 people a month.

Local businesses supplied the dinner, the live music and the raffle prizes for Saturday’s event, leaving more of the ticket revenue for the bursary fund.

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