LaGRANGE – The Kiwanis Club of LaGrange hosted a meet and greet on Tuesday at the LaGrange-Troup County Chamber of Commerce to answer questions from people interested in joining the civic club.

The LaGrange Kiwanis are perhaps best known within the community for their annual pancake breakfast that regularly brings out tremendous community support, but the club does much more than that one fundraiser breakfast. Club members work to make the community a better place for its residents while getting to know one another along the way.

“It is a terrific club,” member Steve Cavender said. “It is a fun club, but it is a hardworking club. We do a lot of things for the community, but it has all revolved around the children of the community. It does go further out – it is an international club – but we try to keep things local. Our scholarship program, the Boy Scouts, Terrific Kids is a big thing.”

Terrific Kids is a program for second graders that the Kiwanis Club sponsors at Whitesville Road Elementary and Ethyl Kight Elementary Schools to encourage academic achievement through goal setting and rewards. Kiwanis also sponsors Key Clubs at Troup High School and Callaway High School.

“It is a club that looks at children first, and then we look at the older adults,” said member Ethyl Ault. “We throw birthday parties for older adults, and we give at least four to five scholarships a year. The money is raised through the pancake breakfast held at the (First) Baptist Church (on the square) in March.”

The funds raised by the event go towards a variety of local projects to benefit the community.

“We work with the Chattahoochee Valley Art Association, and we sponsor their scholarship over there,” Membership Chair John Carden said. “We work with them to sponsor the children –from Harris County, Heard County, Troup County Schools – they all participate in this program.”

To learn more about Kiwanis visit http://lagrange.kiwanisone.org or speak with a club member at their next meeting. The LaGrange Kiwanis Club meets on Thursdays at 12 p.m. at Highland Country Club. This week’s meeting is scheduled to include a tour of THINC College and Career Academy.