RYLA-What's 109!(that's factorial) Its the Hugs at the end

RYLA is a leadership training event for high school students. District 7980 holds one in the Fall and one in the Spring each year. One was held October 27 to 29 at Camp Hazen in Chester, Connecticut.
The students come in on Friday knowing no one and after a short period the facilitators get the whole group dancing together.


Here are the facilitators dancing and getting the students to start dancing

and here's the facilitators talking about the next activity

After spending about 60 hours together the group has bonded and really cares about each other. The last thing the group does is hug each other. There were 109 people at Camp Hazen(86 students, plus all the facilitators, student directors and RYLA chairs) on Sunday and they all hugged each other. Let's see 109 people and each wants to hug the other 108. That's 109! hugs(109*108*107*106.....) That's a lot of hugs. Of course during this hugging process the parents who are picking up their students are trying to put 100 cars in a parking lot which can handle 50 cars.

In any case the students became leaders and created a support system of students and facilitators.

Hugs at end of RYLA

The students prepare a proposal for a service project. On Sunday we heard 12 proposals for projects which were judged by a panel of Rotarians. They were very interesting. Here's one team. Below that is the team of Rotary Judges including Mark Cibula(East Hampton), Cathy Mauritz(Naugatuck), John Coleman(Trumbull), Kevin Guptill(New Haven) and Trish Pearson(Governor and Orange)

RYLA Challenge Judges

Presidents Council in District 7980

Presidents Council on October 28. Membership, What Presidents would like to have known and Youth were discussed. A great Rotary Scholarship recipient from Yale talked about his journey.

Here's Larry Gardner, Governor Elect listening to Presidents discussing what they would have liked to know about being President

And here's Governor Trish listening and talking about what's coming up.

And here's our speaker who was a Doctor in England and decided he wanted to be involved in public health. He got a Rotary Foundation Scholarship to help achieve his dream. He wants to have a bigger impact than a single doctor can have.

And there was an afternoon conversation about our Communication, etc effort led by Bob Friend. This is the proposed Mission of that effort.

Milford Rotary club-October 26, 2017

Milford rotary club meets on Thursdays for lunch at the Gusto Trattoria in Milford.
Their Sargent did a great job bringing out the fun for the day.

Here's the President Winthrop Smith Jr. discussing with the Sargent at Arms. He ran a great meeting we had a good lunch and they discussed their future activities.
Then the President of Southern Connecticut State University, Joe Bertolino, talked about his school. Which all agreed has grown and is now first class. The President and I discussed starting a Rotaract club and using their facilities and he wants to help with both.

Rotary Zones-Hartford October 17 to 21, 2017

Rotary Zones was a great learning experience.

Above are pictures of Larry Gardner and his wife for the marching in of the governor Elects. Below is Rick Benson receiving our award for the largest District gift to the Rotary Foundation. Some of the things I learned are below.

Governor

            Leave District administratively sound

            Motivate members

Do not do

            me,my, I

            language barrier

            too many e-mails

            not react to  Pres problems

            failure to delegate

            publicly embarass people

Do do/Good

            ask questions

            acknowledge others achievements

            be energetic

            good listener

            tell stories

            newletter

            have courage to do things differently

            get PDG to help and support

            brief report after club visit

            personalize speech for each club

            catch somebody doing something good

            fun

Friend Facebook page for every club in District

Sit with AGs 1 on 1

Talk about Foundation

Every year start a new club or satellite club

Go to other population groups, different demographic

North Branford Rotary Club October 4

At a meeting of the North Branford Rotary Club on October 4. They discussed their Spooktacular event on October 28 which is a dinner, auction and other events all in one.

There is a picture of Paul Burns PDG . In the picture of the club at the table is PDG Mukund Nori.