Smyrna Rotary Club, Smyrna, Georgia

The Smyrna Rotary Club, in Smyrna, Georgia unites business, professional, and community leaders for business networking, fellowship, great speakers, delicious food, and, most importantly, service projects in Smyrna, across Georgia or internationally. Interested in community service in Cobb County? Smyrna Rotary Club could be the place for you. We love great people who want to get involved and make our community and planet a better place.

Rotary International is the world’s largest and oldest community service organization (1.2 million Rotarians in 35,000+ clubs in 200+ countries/territories). The various clubs do local, regional and international projects.

Smyrna Rotary Club’s recent local projects include scholarships, book drives for the Smyrna Jail and the Cobb Jail, Robotics equipment for Griffin Middle and Teasley Elementary, involvement with the Adult Education Center, the Center for Children and Young Adults, Read Across America Day and Career Day. We've sent ShelterBox kits to Nepal and Haiti after natural disasters, and we're constntly committed to fighting polio and Alzheimer's research.

We usually meet at Brawner Hall (3180 Atlanta Road, Smyrna, GA 30080) most Tuesdays for lunch (12:15 to 1:15 pm). To attend, please email f12@nfiweb.com.

Some of our 2021 to 2024 Projects

Comfort Bags for Kids at Hospitals - Responding to filled #CobbCounty #EmergencyRooms and #UrgentCare Centers, Smyrna #RotaryClub filled and donated 200 Comfort Bags to #Wellstar, etc. Says the Club Past President Raymond Coffman, "The Comfort Bags are designed to help children adapt to all too long wait times with age-appropriate puzzles, crafts and toys. What’s included stimulates minds and gives comfort." Monica Chapman, a Wellstar Practice Manager, says "This was awesome, and the bags have been a big hit with the staff and children." Smyrna Rotary has served Smyrna, Georgia in local, regional, national and international projects. Upcoming projects are at Osborne High School, Campbell Middle School and Dhulikhel, Nepal!

Backpack Buddies: Club President Nominee Angi Sklar says, "We've been loving packing over 200 weekend meal bags every second Wednesday for the students at Green Acres Elementary school in partnership with Backpack Buddies of Atlanta. It is the highlight of our week!" Sklar also added, "Putting others ahead of self has and will always be a pillar for the Smyrna Rotary Club. Recently, a student grandmother responded, 'It has been extremely helpful. I'm raising three grandchildren on my own. This assistance has been a wonderful blessing.' This is why we do what we do! We're stronger together." This project took almost a year to put together, with presentations to the club from Backpack Buddies of Atlanta and member visits by several Smyrna Rotarians to Backpack Buddies’ impressive facilities. Smyrna Rotarians truck over 2,500 food items and bring plastic bags, etc., to Green Acres Elementary, and then gather to assemble the 200 bags of food. This ongoing project is fun, engaging, and helps us do something truly useful directly in our community. A typical event has eight Rotarians and guests and takes two to three hours.

GG1751286: Let Every Child Read is a $163,000 global grant that extends a six-year initiative to help disadvantaged kids ages 0 to 5 develop basic literacy skills. It builds on GG1523886 (International Sponsor: D6900’s Rotary Club Peachtree City), which reaches 8,500 kids in 425 classrooms each year. This is done in conjunction with ACUDEN, Puerto Rico’s largest Head Start program and the third largest in the United States. The new grant extended the reach to 1,240 Head Start classrooms and an additional 16,200 preschool kids per year. This thus covers 70% of Puerto Rico’s Head Start preschool kids. between Rotary Club of Smyrna and Rotary Club of San Juan, Puerto Rico, as well as Rotary Clubs in Arecibo, Manati, Rio Piedras, Perla del Sur (Ponce), Humacao, Quebradillas and Mayaguez, all in Puerto Rico.

Book Drive – Smyrna Rotarians have a long passion for education. We’ve worked with all 14 Smyrna area public schools of Cobb County School systems in light cleanup, light landscaping or even painting projects. We’ve volunteered to read on Dr. Seuss/Read Across America Day, Career Day and more. But we’ve also done several dictionary projects, book grants and two robotics DSGs. In the past we’ve done book drives for the Smyrna Jail and Cobb Jail. Now we did another book drive to give to police officers who drive around and hand them out to kids to encourage literacy, etc. This year’s drive had several hundred books and magazines.

#SmyrnaGA #CommunityService #ServiceProjects – Smyrna Rotarians were honored to participate in a stuff backpacks project at Cobb Civic Center organized by Amie Burke, CEO & Co-Founder of KIDS CARE. 80 volunteers ages 6 to 60 went around the room filling Elementary School, Middle School and High School backpacks with various items per school type appropriate checklists. Thus, for instance, Elementary School kids received crayons while High School kids received scientific calculators. But each checklist included many items such as pencils, rulers, 3-ring notebooks, paper, spiral notebooks, scissors, highlighters, Post-Its, erasers, pencil sharpeners, pens, lunch bags, not to mention the backpack itself. Interested in participating? This is an annual project. The backpacks are for Cobb County students. Thank you @kidscare2018!!!

#humantraffickingawareness #rotaryclubs #rotaryinternational: The Rotary Clubs of Alpharetta, Marietta, North Cobb and Smyrna have teamed with Rotary Action Group Against Slavery to offer Rescuing Hope as a resource for speakers and materials to fight Human Trafficking. $4,500 in grant funding is available for clubs to invite the Rescuing Hope team to enlighten, educate and empower Rotarians in this fight and connect the resources they offer to schools, law enforcement, medical providers and other community organizations. Funding is available for travel expenses for the speakers as well as the educational material to be distributed. To learn more about Rescuing Hope visit https://www.rescuinghope.com/ and for more info on RAGAS https://ragas.online/.

#SmyrnaRotary #SmyrnaGeorgia #SmyrnaGA - Campbell Middle School Cleanup Day - SAT 4/23/2022 from 9 am to 12 noon at Campbell Middle School. This was a wonderful community-wide event organized by the school that had perhaps 50 volunteers to help clean up around the school. We also laid mulch, raked leaves, picked up branches and picked up trash around the school.

Other Projects

For 2018-2019,we participated in a global grant project for Bangladesh, a hearing aid project in India and a SOUNS global grant project. For 2017-2018, some of our projects included Cobb Christmas, a food drive in February, a project in Bangladesh, Adopt a Mile on Windy Hill, Career Day at Teasley Elementary, sponsoring Smyrna Memorial Day and Smyrna Veterans Day, etc.

Polio Plus

Smyrna Rotary Club supports the Polio Plus initiative generously every year. Polio has been defeated in all but a few countries. Soon it will be gone for good!

Alzheimer's Disease

Smyrna Rotary Club raises about $2,500 annually to combat Alzheimer's Disease!

2018/2019 Hearing Aid Project!

The Jeevan Jyoti is a special needs school in in Dhanbad, India. Thanks to a $4,680 grant by Smyrna Rotary Club and the Dhanbad Rotary Club, 50 children got hearing screenings and fitted hearing aids for the first time in their lives. They've also received hearing aid batteries for three years. Rotary not only improves the lives in our community but touches lives around the world. Thanks to President Nominee Raymond Coffman for leading this project!

2018 Bangladesh Project

North Columbus Rotary Club, Smyrn Rotary Club, East Cobb Rotary Club and other Rotary Clubs teamed for a global grant for a hospital in Bangladesh for a mobile mammography vehicle and staff training that will do thousands of screenings.

2017/2018 Christmas Projects - Rotary Cares!

Smynra Rotary adopted two local families to help provide their eight children ages 3 to 16 with the blessing of waking up to Christmas presents on Christmas morning. Presents included shoes, clothes, and a few toys on their wish lists.

Smyrna Rotary joined in with hundreds of volunteers to assist in providing Cobb Christmas this past year. Cobb Christmas, staffed 100% by volunteers, provides 3 toys to each child to families in need. Smyrna Rotary volunteers spent half a day doing what was needed to ensure a successful 2017 Cobb Christmas.

2014-2019 Teasley Elementary School

Teasley Elementary School invites us to read to their kids on Read Across America Day in March and make presentations on Career Day in the Fall. Thanks to our friends Amy Crosby, Principal Leslie Mansfield, etc., for inviting us! The pleasure is ours!

Charity Navigator: Rotary 100%, Red Cross, etc., much lower

See Charity Navigator: Rotary 100%, Red Cross, etc., much lower. Rotary is at 100%, while the American Red Cross is at 79%, March of Dimes 73% and United Way at 86%. United Way's CEO compensation is $849,581; Rotary's is $167,291 though its revenue is almost three times greater than United Way's. Rotary donations go to those who need them. Questions? please email f12@nfiweb.com.

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