Racegoers donate $18,000 to continue teacher's legacy

The Neil Porter Legacy (NPL), a not-for-profit named after the late Brauer College teacher, was the charity chosen by the Warrnambol Racing Club to partner with this year.

Mr Porter's son Matt said he was amazed by the generosity shown by patrons at the event.

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"We raised $18,292.70 through the support of volunteers, the Warrnambool Racing Club (WRC) committee and Warrnambool Bus Lines," he said.

"We can't thank the WRC and Warrnambool Bus Lines enough. The WRC made us feel part of the carnival, gave us so many opportunities and checked in every few hours to see how we were going.

"Warrnambool Bus Lines drivers collected donations for us, assisted our volunteers with collecting donations by coordinating our movements and were also fantastic to work with.

"Each of these organisations were genuinely happy for us to raise this amount and super supportive of the work we're doing."

Mr Porter said the funds would help in various ways.

"The money will be a huge assistance to our not-for-profit. We pay for the transport of students to the career-related activities we organise and regularly need to purchase resources for these activities. The money raised will be used to cover these costs."

Mr Porter said it was great to talk to people about the not-for-profit organisation at the races.

"Over the three days we were able to speak to any interested racegoers and these chats resulted in the NPL making many valuable connections with industry members," he said.

"We now have many more contacts we can work with to show students even more careers."

Mr Porter said the legacy continued his late father's passion for helping students enter rewarding careers by working closely with secondary schools to expose students to the many different career options through guest speakers, community involvement in classes, industry experiences, tours of workplaces, meetings with career advisers and seeing educational facilities.

"We believe students should select a career based on their interests rather than potential ATAR and that 'you can't be what you can't see'," Mr Porter said.

The money was raised through the Warrnambool Racing Club's JUMP program.

Club operations manager Kate Lindsey said she was delighted with the funds raised for the Neil Porter Legacy.

"From the outset Matt was very keen on ensuring this partnership was a strong one," Ms Lindsey said.

"We provide the platform for money to be raised, however it is up to the recipient to drive this and Matt certainly did.

"It was a pleasure to work with Matt and his extended volunteer team and as a club we cannot wait to see Neil Porter Legacy continue to do wonderful things in our community by guiding secondary school students through a really important period of their life."

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