Vice Principal of Merritt Secondary School (MSS) Gian Cavaliere, is bringing together School District 58, the Merritt and District Chamber of Commerce and local businesses to support the graduating students of 2020 with a Grad “Walk of Stars”.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, grads in Merritt, like others across BC, will not be having a traditional graduation ceremony, which would contradict Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry’s limits on gatherings of more than 50 people and social distancing protocols.

Cavaliere decided to take a different approach to celebrate graduates, and get the community involved.

“We’re currently in contact with the Chamber of Commerce to receive all of the contact email addresses of all of the businesses in town,” explained Cavaliere.

“Our hope is that we will contact all of them and ask them if they would like to be part of our ‘Walk of Grads’ theme, which basically means they would display up to three different grad photos on their windows or they can create their own fun display in front of their business. That way when people drive around town or walk around town, they can kind of get a feel for who’s graduating this year, and we can kind of create some excitement around graduation, because obviously grads are not going to get exactly what other years have. We thought this was a fun way to mix things up, create some excitement in town, really show our youth that we love them and we wish them the best and we recognize them as best we can.”

The school district plans to have the photos delivered to participating businesses by June 1. So far, the response has been positive, with some businesses already volunteering space.

“The excitement has been good, it’s been a bit of work for sure putting it together but we’re looking forward to printing off those photos,” said Cavaliere.

“We’ve had a lot of companies already say that they want to have up to ten in the windows, and we love the fact that they’d like to have ten in their windows, but we really want to make sure we spread it around town so that wherever you go you’ll see someone’s grad photo displayed out front.”

Cavaliere hopes that while it won’t be the same as a commencement ceremony, it will be a positive experience for the graduates and the community.

“It recognizes our youth in town, it recognizes the fact that they’ve made a huge landmark and passed a milestone in graduating this year,” Cavaliere said.

“We want the youth to know that this community loves them and that they’ll be supported even after high school grad in whatever direction they want to go towards.”