Rotary Youth Leadership Camp (RYLA), feedback from the ten Traip Academy Students who attended this year's June experience.
The Rotary Youth Leadership Camp (RYLA) is a four day program at Camp Hynes that gathers students completing their sophomore year of school from communities across our Rotary District 7780. Campers are grouped in LEGGS, 12 individuals who have never met before. Throughout the program the teams are given tasks designed to help them build teamwork, take leadership roles, solve problems together, and to work with other leaders. They spend the entire time getting out of their individual "comfort zones" and working with each other's strengths and weaknesses. This year the Rotary Club of Kittery, the Rotary Afterhours Club, and with District support, sponsored 10 campers.
On Tuesday September 24th four of this years' camp alumnae reported on their experience at a Rotary Club of Kittery meeting in the Traip Cafeteria. They brought with them reports from the six campers who could not attend due to class commitments, at Traip or off-campus.
A common thread to all of the comments was, how much they had been challenged and how much they had learned about themselves. Forceful leaders had learned to listen to others and follow other leaders; more reticent individuals discovered they could step forward and lead. Another comment was how they had learned to listen and communicate better. Each challenge task they had been given was followed up by dissecting what they had learned and how they could have improved, which became obvious in the quality of their verbal reports to the Rotary Club on the entire camp experience.
A measure of what they really thought about the camp and what they gained was the number of them who stated they were already planning to apply to become counselors at next year's RYLA Camp. Most of the students also noted that they still communicated regularly with the other members of their "LEGG" (all prior strangers). Those involved in sports or attending classes at Sanford also remarked about meeting fellow campers from across the state.
With 10 Traip Academy students attending in 2024, and 12 in 2023, almost 10% of the current school students have had the RYLA experience.