Newnan Rotary Club

09/02/2026

Grants Are Now Open!

The Rotary Club of Newnan is now accepting applications for its 2026-27 community grants.

Eligible 501(c)(3) organizations serving Coweta County can apply through 5 p.m. Nov. 1. Grants support local programs ranging from youth and literacy to health care, food assistance, vocational education and more.

Apply here: https://newnan-rotary-grant-application.netlify.app

09/01/2026

If your nonprofit serves Coweta County, this one is for you!

The Rotary Club of Newnan's community grants are open. They go to 501(c)(3) organizations doing the work right here in Coweta!

The money is raised at the Tour of Coweta and the Fourth of July fireworks. It comes from this community, and it goes straight back into it.

Applications opened September 1 and close Sunday, November 1 at 5 p.m. Everything is online.

Apply: newnan-rotary-grant-application.netlify.app

Questions: [email protected] or [email protected]

08/31/2026

GRSP Conclave 2026 brought the Georgia Rotary Student Program's new class together for the first time — students now studying at 23 colleges and universities across Georgia, supported by 78 Rotary clubs in all three of the state's Rotary districts. This year's class includes the first scholars ever to come from Kosovo and Sierra Leone. Saturday night's Parade of Nations had them in the traditional dress of their home countries, sharing a piece of where they come from with the people who will look after them all year.

Our own Maciej Derecki was among them. He came to us from Bydgoszcz, Poland, and he's studying aerospace engineering at the University of West Georgia. The Rotary Club of Newnan has been sponsoring GRSP scholars since 1952 — and every year, we get the better end of the deal.

08/28/2026

Every University of West Georgia team meeting starts the same way — two claps and one word, PRIDE, for Personal Responsibility in Delivering Excellence.

Head coach Steve Englehart brought that to our club, along with the road behind it: from a first college coaching job to becoming a head coaching job at 28 that made him the youngest in the country, and now leading the the University of West Georgia Wolves in the new season!

The other motto he left with us is the one he cares most about — "victory is earned and enjoyed by all" — and he meant the community, not just the roster. UWG is forty minutes up the road, and he'd like us to think of the Wolves as our team too.

Kickoff is tomorrow! Get your tickets now!

https://uwgathletics.com/sports/tickets

08/26/2026

In 1946, a Thomasville Rotarian named Will Watt started a committee with one idea: bring international students to Georgia, put them in the care of Rotary clubs for a year, and let friendship do the work that treaties couldn't. Four students arrived in 1947. Eighty years later the purpose hasn't changed — world peace through understanding.

Newnan joined in 1952 with a student from Korea. We've hosted students from 35 countries since, every continent except Antarctica.

One thing worth clearing up: GRSP isn't an exchange. We don't send students out. A Georgia club sponsors one student for one year at a Georgia college, with host families here at home. Close to 4,000 students from 113 countries have come through it.

This weekend the program turns 80 at Conclave in Savannah, where this year's class — students from 20 countries headed to 21 Georgia campuses — meets the Rotarians behind their year. WTOC talked with co-chairs Jim Drake and Nina Gompels:

https://www.wtoc.com/2026/08/17/georgia-rotary-student-program-celebrating-80th-anniversary/

Eighty years of this. Seventy-four of them in Newnan.

Students traveling to Georgia from 21 different countries.

08/25/2026

Since the 1930s, this club has awarded the Rotary Cup.

Every year, faculty at each of Coweta County's six high schools choose one graduating senior — not necessarily the student with the highest GPA, but the student who demonstrated the most leadership, citizenship, and scholarship. They receive a silver engraved cup and a monetary award.

Newnan High. East Coweta. Northgate. Heritage. Trinity Christian. Central Christian. Six cups, every single year, for close to ninety years.

There are people in this county in their eighties who still have theirs.

08/20/2026

Maciej Derecki arrived at our meeting yesterday with pamphlets about his hometown to hand out, because he wanted us to be able to picture it.

He is this year's Georgia Rotary Student Program scholar; he is from Bydgoszcz, Poland, and he spent an hour telling us where he came from — a mother who coached him through mathematics competitions until he outgrew her, thirteen years of tennis with the same coach, and a Fat Thursday doughnut record of twenty-three!

He has finished the first year of an aerospace engineering degree at Warsaw University of Technology and is spending this year at the University of West Georgia studying the astronomy he fell in love with as a child before going back to build aircraft and rocket engines.

He is also the second of his family to come: his father was a GRSP scholar and a UWG student, and his younger sister hopes to apply next year.

Poland has a proverb he shared with us — Gość w domu, Bóg w domu, "a guest in the house is God in the house," and we couldn't agree more!

Welcome to Newnan, Maciej.

08/13/2026

It is one of our favorite meetings of the year, and today the room was full! East Coweta, Newnan, Northgate, The Heritage School and Trinity Christian each brought coaches, athletic directors and student-athletes to look ahead at the season.

We heard about regions stacked with tough opponents, and about a Newnan team that showed up over a hundred strong on a Saturday morning — the morning after a Friday night game — to build 48 beds for local children with Sleeping in Heavenly Peace, the fourth year they have done it.

But the answer that stayed with us came when the coaches were asked why they keep doing this. "High school is the purest form of football there is. At the end of the day it's about these kids. It's not about us."

Thank you to every coach, athletic director and student-athlete who joined us today, and to the Coweta County School Board for the work you do for our students. Coweta County, we will see you Friday night!

08/12/2026

If you've driven past the Newnan Country Club on a Wednesday at noon, there's a good chance you drove past us.

The Rotary Club of Newnan has met here every week since 1953, and we've been a club in this town since 1924. Eighty-two members — teachers, contractors, business owners, bankers, nurses, retirees who couldn't sit still.

What we actually do: backpacks for kids who need them, grants to local nonprofits, the crosses downtown every Memorial Day, the Tour of Coweta every April, and the fireworks you watch on the Fourth of July.

You don't need an invitation to visit. Wednesdays, noon, 1356 US-29.

newnanrotary.org

08/03/2026

Some of the most useful work in Coweta County is also the least visible: a wheelchair ramp that lets someone leave their own house, a set of porch steps that stop being dangerous, a yard that finally gets cleared. That is what RiverLife does, and its executive director, Melanie Reeves, came to the Rotary Club of Newnan last week to explain how.

The model is simple — RiverLife finds the neighbors who need hands-on help, then matches them with volunteers who want to give it. Since 2015, that has added up to more than 11,000 volunteers and more than 3,200 individuals and families helped, including 3,900 volunteers on roughly 300 properties after the March 2021 tornado. Alongside the repair work, RiverLife runs Silver Bells Coweta for seniors at Christmas and the ServeCoweta community service days. Thank you, Melanie, for spending your Wednesday with us.