The Holland M. Ware Charitable Foundation has established a fund to provide scholarships for students in trade and technical programs and for GED testing at West Georgia Technical College. This fund – known as the Holland M. Ware Scholarship Fund – is named for philanthropist Holland Ware, whose life was about giving and improving quality of life for people and animals through research and action. 

The Holland M. Ware Charitable Foundation is committed to providing financial resources that encourage opportunities for students pursuing careers in trade and technical fields who may not otherwise have the resources to begin and/or complete their education.

“We were specifically interested in West Georgia Tech, as our Founder was a native to Hogansville and we spend a significant amount of our time and resources in the West Georgia area, specifically LaGrange and Newnan,” Alyssa Schoessow, Executive Operations Director of the Ware Foundation, said. “Our hope is to create scholarship opportunities for students to learn a skill and trade that they otherwise may not be able to afford to do. In doing so, they would be able to have a career that would not be possible without the necessary education.”

Holland Ware was one of the largest landowners in the U.S., owning a substantial amount of timberland across several Southern states, but in his hometown of Hogansville and across the West Georgia area, he may have been more well-known for his humanitarian spirit. Ware and his wife, Faye, invested millions of dollars in their hometown region, giving to Piedmont and Emory hospitals, and the LaGrange and Coweta county animal shelters, just to name a few. The Wares transferred a considerable amount of their holdings to the Foundation, which supports cancer research and humane treatment of animals among other areas.

The Holland M. Ware Scholarship Fund will provide six scholarships per year for GED testing and 18 scholarships per year for students in technical and trade programs at the Coweta or LaGrange campuses, or the Franklin or Greenville instructional sites.

“We are so proud to be entrusted with the Holland M. Ware Scholarship Fund for technical education students and the Holland M. Ware GED Scholarship Fund for adult education students,” WGTC Foundation Executive Director Kelsey Jones said. “We know these investments will have a tremendous impact on the lives of so many students, and we’re so grateful to have established what I’m sure will be a strong connection to the Holland M. Ware Charitable Foundation.”

To learn more about supporting the WGTC Foundation, please email [email protected].

West Georgia Technical College, with campuses in Carroll, Coweta, Douglas, Haralson and Troup counties and class sites in Heard and Meriwether counties, offers more than 120 associate degree, diploma and technical certificate programs of study. A unit of the Technical College System of Georgia, West Georgia Tech is one of the largest of the state’s 22 technical colleges. For more information, please visit westgatech.edu.