Monday, October 30, 2017

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.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

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.




Wednesday, October 25, 2017

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

Thursday, October 5, 2017

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.