The annual, on-ship auction raised over $34,000 for scholarships for future Semester at Sea voyagers. Over 60% of the voyage community participated in the ongoing fundraising event.
Resident’s Director and Alumni & Development Team Coordinator, Alex Obed, helped coordinate the December 7 evening. He also had a team of five work-study students who have been working on coordinating the auction for weeks.
“Whether it was $3 or $1,000, seeing how many people from our shipboard community participate to benefit future voyagers was so awesome,” Obed said. “I also really appreciated the Alumni team who helped make the evening go smoothly.”
Auctioneers Andrew Gray and Ella Miller helped auction items that voyagers bought in ports, home stays, special ship-life activities and other handmade items during the live auction. Other hot ticket items included the captain’s hat, signed by Captain Kostas, blowing the ship’s whistle upon arriving in the San Diego harbor, private yoga sessions and a final’s studying survival snack pack.
The Alumni team has also been collecting donations for the past few weeks in the form of either auction items or small monetary donations. The ship’s sea that had the most participation in terms of percentage of involvement won an ice cream party on deck nine.
The money is all contributed to future voyage accounts to help support student sailors.
