It's getting closer to a milestone point in the year for many Portage la Prairie students in high school. Graduation day is being planned, and along with that, scholarships are being prepared to help students reach their career goals. 

Career and Opportunities counsellor Kellee Clifford-Bousquet shares the amount of money that's funding the awards,

"PCI offers over $90,000 in scholarships every year to our Grade 12 students who are going to post-secondary," says Clifford-Bousquet. "And they're given the applications after they meet with me in the beginning of February, and they were just due to me this past week. Now there's a whole process involved in getting all of those applications in and out to our outside groups for whom we're very thankful in their support in giving all these students lots of support in their post-secondary."

She notes there are over 200 to be given out.

"There are different types," explains Clifford-Bousquet. "We have outside groups that I prepare the packages for, and those outside groups, from the applicants, choose the recipient themselves. Then PCI has a committee and we choose ones that these groups have decided that they would like the school to choose."

She explains PCI also has a committee that chooses students for those groups who wish to leave it to the school to decide which students should receive their awards. Clifford-Bousquet outlines some of the more recent ones that have been added to the list of benefactors.

"We do have James Reynolds, a recent teacher at PCI who passed away," she continues. "His family has created one this year. I also have John Rennie scholarship, who was a teacher here years ago, whose family has also revamped how they did it. It's a different kind of award this year, so it's a newer one to us, as well."

Clifford-Bousquet says they receive a lot of support from the Community Foundation of Portage and District, and executive director Mandy Dubois.

"Scholarships and bursaries that can be applied for through there and we give that information to our students, as well, so that we work together to make sure that they have access to all of them that are available," says Clifford-Bousquet. "We also have outside PCI scholarships and bursaries that are available on our website. So, any of them that get sent to me that we don't give out (but ones that we have the information for), students or families can go on the PCI website, and under 'post-secondary,' they can find the PowerPoint page of all of those that they can apply for, as well."