“I would just like to thank all of you from the Rotary Club of Berrima District for sponsoring me to go to RYLA in 2019, it highlights your club’s commitment to investing in this community’s future leaders. RYLA, which stands for Rotary Youth Leadership Awards, is a 6-day intensive leadership course comprised of participants from Districts 9700 and 9710; which covers areas across NSW as far as Lake Cargelligo, Blayney and the South Coast.
This was such an enjoyable but busy week, filled with a huge amount of theoretical and practical learning, so I thought I would just share with you a few of the sessions that resonated particularly with me.
The first day began with the 35 participants arriving and being broken down into smaller syndicate groups, led by a mentor who is a previous participant of the RYLA program. We then entered our first session which was led by Scott Bourke (Rotary Club of Yass), where we discussed various leadership styles and techniques. Then, in our syndicate groups we ran through a number of practical activities to put this leadership theory into action.
Following this was Phillip Boyce’s presentation on conflict resolution, which was very timely as it is an integral part of good leadership and was used throughout the week.
The day concluded with some fun debating topics including; dog vs cats, smooth vs crunchy peanut butter, and fresh vs toasted sandwiches.
Day 2 began with us getting our HBDI profiles from Barbara Baikie (Rotary Club of Hall); which is a brain dominance test which describes our thinking preferences as a combination of the analytical, practical, relational, and experimental quadrants.
Part of this HBDI session involved groups writing a newspaper article from the perspective of the quadrant which opposed their highest or most favoured way of thinking, which reiterated the importance, and possible challenges involved in considering other’s perspectives and ideas as a leader.
The third day began with us again being divided into groups by Scott Bourke and completing a circuit of unusual activities, each of which had to be led by a different group member. We completed the activities in accordance to the PISCE leadership model, which stands for; Plan, Implement, Support, Control, and Evaluate. Our group found that we really benefitted from thorough planning which enabled us to successfully complete all of the activities on the circuit, and it helped negated the fact that all of our group members had vastly different leadership ideas, strengths, and personality types.
Leading on from this was a quite confronting session from Glenn Wilcox which detailed his life story of drug and alcohol abuse, addiction, and recovery; with a hugely inspiring message of resilience. This was followed by a mental health session from David Seagal, which highlighted the importance of looking after not only your own, but considering your peers and team member’s wellbeing, and how this makes for more successful teams and leaders.
The day ended with our RYLA dinner, where over 50 members from sponsoring rotary clubs were in attendance, and a keynote speech from Dr Jenny Gray, CEO of Zoos Victoria, who shared lessons and anecdotes from her time in this position of leadership.
Our fourth day began with an engaging and moving session lead by Security Risk Management specialist Andrew Macfarlane, which I felt neatly tied together a number of areas of focus from the whole program; one obviously being leadership in service, but also resilience, mental health awareness, conflict resolution both as a leader and a follower, ethics, and communication.
After this was a ‘feel your fear’ create climbing session, and although this wasn’t something I was particularly fearful of, it was really lovely to watch some of my peers conquer fears of their own. This was followed by a relaxing swim in the river and barbeque dinner.
On arrival back at Greenhills we did our ‘$500 Challenge’ presentations. The $500 Challenge is a group exercise where we were tasked to create a marketing campaign for one of a number of Rotary projects. Our group presentation was on ‘Rotarians Against Malaria’, or RAM, where our group was awarded $150 of the overall pool; which will be donated to purchase 5 mosquito nets and $100 worth of tools for a village. Other Rotary programs that were presented included TaraEd (the winning presentation receiving a donation of $250), MAFO ($100), ROMAC ($100), End Polio Now ($50 which increases in value due to the matching programme of the Bill and Melinda gates Foundation), and End Trachoma 2020 ($100).
On Day 5 we had a session led by Dr Thomas Neilson which was on developing our own ethical and personal values, and how these should help dictate our leadership styles and decision making. Following this were wonderful sessions lead by RC Berrima District’s Melissa Meredith and Bridget Coysn about goal setting, time management, budgeting, and the Rotary 4 Way Test.
When I was sitting down to write this, I did not expect it to be this difficult to explain what exactly I got out of RYLA. While it is easy enough to say that during and since the programme I have strengthened my problem solving and conflict resolution skills, learnt and put into action different leadership strategies, gained motivation to set and achieve goals, learnt more about the ethics of positive leadership, become motivated to become more involved in my community, learnt more about myself and my leadership style, and had fun… I don’t think it fully captures what RYLA is all about. To me, it is something far more tacit and personal that each participant takes from the course. You have the opportunity to meet a large group of people from different backgrounds, which means they all bring something unique and special to the program, and I think there is something that you can learn off of everybody there; including participants, mentors, the lovely committee, as well as the inspirational speakers. So, I would just like to thank again the Rotary Club of Berrima District for sponsoring me to go to RYLA and I will definitely recommend to program to my peers. Thank you.”
Julia McGrath
2019
RYLA is an amazing programme that impacts on everyone who gets involved. The committee are preparing for RYLA 2020 which will run from the 11th to the 17th January at Greenhills Conference Centre in Cotter. We will be sending information packs out to all the clubs in D9705 before June 30th with applications opening in September 2019.
“RYLA is a true example of Rotary always looks ahead towards the future Mentoring and investing in our future leaders is Step One ! ” Jefferson, RYLA 2019
Lyndall McGrath
District Chair RYLA 2019/20
Rotary Youth Leadership Awards
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