Rotary Scholarships

Newberg Noon Rotary Club provides over $40,000 in scholarship funds to area high school seniors each year. More information and applications are available from area high school counselors.

SMART Program

Newberg Noon Rotary Club members provide vital reading support and books to Newberg area children through the SMART (Start Making a Reader Today) program. Reading is the gateway to learning, opening doors to faraway adventures, new possibilities, and promising futures. Without reading skills, children will face challenges throughout their lives. Rotary volunteers read one-on-one with students during the school year, modeling a love of reading and helping to build children’s reading skills and self confidence in a positive environment. SMART volunteers read with students at Edwards and Joan Austin elementary schools.

Newberg Library’s Summer Reading Program

Our club contributes to the Newberg Public Library’s summer reading program, which offers fun activities and incentives for children, teens and adults to read while school is out. This program is designed to address the achievement gap evident in high school due to unequal student access to summer learning programs throughout their education. Over 2,000 children participate each year.

Rotary Dictionary Project

Newberg Noon Rotary Club provides a dictionary to every 3rd grader in our community through this annual program. These dictionaries not only are a resource for the children for many years, but teachers incorporate vocabulary, spelling, writing lessons and more when the children receive their dictionary. Rotarians enjoy taking the dictionaries to the classrooms each fall.

Youth Exchange

While Stew Harris was president from 1970 to 1971, the youth exchange program began and gave high school students the opportunity to study abroad. Students could go on a year long exchange or on a short term exchange which only lasted a few months. The first student to participate in the program was an incoming student from Sydney, Australia named Chris Jordan. He stayed in Newberg for a year and lived with multiple host families. The first outgoing students were Debbie LaShana and Liz Bartell. They traveled to Quebec and Argentina for a year following Chris’s stay in Newberg. The club participated in hosting and sending a student each year until they turned the administration of the program over to the Early Birds Rotary Club of Newberg . Newberg’s implementation of this program was so successful that they became a model club for others to follow.

The Club continues to support Youth Exchange. To provide consistency, the Early Bird Club manages the program for Newberg InBound and OutBound students with the our club providing financial support. Students interested in participating should contact their school counseling office.