The Edwardsburg Public Schools Foundation will hosting an event that will allow people to both test drive new vehicles and give back to the community.

The foundation will host its annual Drive 4 UR School fundraiser from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 16, in the Edwardsburg High School parking lot. The event is sponsored by the Ford Motor Company, and the Edwardsburg Public Schools Foundation will be partnering with the Campbell Ford Lincoln dealership in Niles for the event.

Ford will provide a variety of cars available to test drive free of cost. For each test drive, Ford will donate $20 to the Edwardsburg Public Schools fund.

All money raised from the fundraiser will go toward scholarships for graduating seniors.

“If we have 300 drivers, which is the maximum we could have, we would earn $6,000 from Ford,” said Della Holdread, vice president of the Edwardsburg Public Schools Foundation and president of the school board.

Those looking to partake in the event will need to be 18 years or older, have a valid drivers licence and fill out a test-drive waiver. There can be only one driver per household.

Each test drive will be a relatively short drive around the industrial park, though drivers will be able to test drive as many cars as they want at no cost. This means that families can come to the event and spend several hours riding around in different cars, something Holdread remembers one family doing last year.

“We had this one family. It was so sweet. A family of five and it was the little boy’s birthday and he got to choose the first car,” Holdread said. “They had a blast choosing who would choose the next car to test out. They spent the whole day with us.”

The event is the foundation’s biggest fundraiser of the year, bringing in more money than the other two fundraisers that it hosts, Holdread said.

Holdread is confident that the foundation will raise the full $6,000 that Ford is willing to donate, as in the last four out of six years the foundation has been running the event, they have raised the full amount.

To help make this happen, Holdread and the rest of the foundation members have been heavily advertising the event in recent weeks through Facebook, the public schools’ website and by passing flyers out at various events.

Advertising the event and ensuring good attendance is something the foundation is focused on because it is important to raise money for student scholarships, Holdread said.

“Anything we can do to give [students] a helping hand and a good start is important,” she said. “This is why we do this.”