PARIS – The first Pumpkin Festival for Oxford Hills will be held Saturday at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School with the lighting ceremony set for 7 p.m. The event is free.

The festival, which will showcase hundreds of pumpkins carved by schoolchildren and others, runs from 4 to 9 p.m. It’s a fund-raiser for Dollars for Scholars, a SAD 17 scholarship program to help students pay for higher education. People may pledge a penny a pumpkin or any amount they wish.

Individuals, families, organizations, companies and others are invited to bring carved or decorated pumpkins to display, or carve them at the festival at special stations.

Festival coordinator Pat Chenery got the idea for the festival after attending the annual Keene Pumpkin Festival in Keene, N.H., where a world record 28,952 lit jack-o’-lanterns were displayed last year.

Evelyn Donovan of Paris, a volunteer for the Oxford Hills festival, said the company that supplies the scaffolding for the Keene festival offered to provide its services and supplies for free to the Oxford Hills festival today.

She said hundreds of pumpkins have already been carved by school children, and as soon as the scaffolding has been set up this morning at the high school on Route 26, volunteers will begin arranging the jack-o’-lanterns for display.

Sponsors of the festival are SAD 17, Boston Ladder & Scaffolding of Scarborough, Norway-Paris Kiwanis Club, Millett Realty of Auburn, Paris Farmers Union, Oxford Hills Rotary Club and Smedberg’s Crystal Spring Farm of Oxford.

Those unable to attend but who would like to donate may send contributions to Dollars for Scholars, P.O. Box 174, Norway, ME 04268.