Rotary Youth Leadership Awards(District 7980) May 12-14 at Camp Hazen

Rotary Youth Leadership Awards Is a conference for high school students. Our District holds two RYLAs per year at Camp Hazen. We had 83 students at our RYLA on May 12-14. The conference is student run by student directors and about 20 .trained student facilitators. The goal of the conference is to provide the attendees with leadership skills which will help them in their lives.

At the beginning the students prepare a banner and a cheer which is a way to get them to work together and learn a bit on how to lead in a group of strangers.



Here you can see the student directors at the front of the room teaching the attendees about leadership and what skills are needed to be a good leader.

Many of the activities give the attendees a chance to talk to a large group of other attendees. This gives them a chance to practice public speaking and to also share some of their own thoughts.




At this RYLA an award was given to an Interact club which has been running for 40 years. The
Joseph A Foran High School Interact Club in Milford, CT.

The students work in groups of 6-8 to prepare a proposal for a service project. Each group makes a short presentation and every attendee does a part of the presentation. A group of Rotarian judges then chooses one or more projects for funding. At this RYLA three projects were chosen for funding by four eminent Rotarians.

Committee Chairs and AG Meeting hosted by Governor Trish

On May 20 Governor Elect Trish Pearson had about 20 leaders on Laurel Island to

communicate with each other and share goals and plans. Here is Governor Elect Trish and her dog laying out the plan for the day.

One of the activities was a challenge for all in the room to work together to put together a bunch of pictures into a sequence. The 7980 leaders did pretty well but there was definitely room for improvement.

The highlight was "Speed Dating" where each Committee representative talked to a sequence of AGs about how they could work together. For Youth Services there was great interaction and an understanding of how Youth and AGs could work together. A presentation was made on RYLA by one of our RYLA alumni which was very well received.

Multi District Conference April 28-30,2017 Providence

Four Rotary Districts had their conferences together this Spring. Rotary International President John Germ was present and spoke Friday night.  After dinner there was a fire/water show, They light torches aong a canal and lots of people come out for the show and walking around and talking.

On Saturday there were both Interact and Rotaract conferences, which were well attended and provided lots of information for thought and action. Our District(7980) students provided leadership in both conferences. Sharon Johnson of Rotary District 7950 provided overall leadership for the Interact and Rotaract conferences.

 The Youth Exchange students from the Districts told a bit about themselves. They were well spoken,

Michael Angelo Caruso, a great public speaker, and a Rotary Governor informed the Interactors how to improve their speaking abilities.

Alan Hurst won the Distinguished Service Award the most prestigious Service Award in Rotary.