John Beals described R.Y.L.A. as an outreach for youth. The initials stand for Rotary Youth Leadership Awards.

The students who apply and are picked for the program spend a three-day weekend at Camp Kern to learn about and develop leadership skills.

 

Below you see the three Centerville students who attended R.Y.L.A., and to the left Freesia, the mother of Rhea Dhingra, who is second from the right. Aneesh Kathula is second from left, and and Vidushi Tripathi is on the far right. President Brad Thorp and Saviji Subramaniam are seen talking in the background.

 

District 7760 started the program, John said. Nine years ago the program was just one day, sponsored by the Dayton Engineers Club. Carol Hughes now heads up the three-day event.

 

Each of the three students told a bit about their future plans. Vidushi Tripathi said she was on the science Olympic team at CHS and plans to go to college and study a science-related field. Aneesh Kathula, in the school’s Interact club, like the others, said he is not sure yet of his future course of study. Rhea Dhingra also thinks her path might take a scientific bent.

 

The group thanked our club for giving them the opportunity to participate in the program. Rhea said the 80 to 90 kids were divided into teams of ten members. “We all made friends from different schools,” she said. Rhea said the first day was hot, though it was cooler inside the woods where they did activities. They had a spider web of ropes that they had to go through, and though everyone had different opinions about how to approach the challenge, they came together to work through it, she said.

 

Aneesh said speakers came to talk about the need for safe water in Africa, which is what the Interact club at Centerville has been working on, doing fund-raising to put a special water pump in a village in Malawi. The second day a polio survivor talked to the group. He was a Vietnam man who showed them how to play basketball in a wheelchair, showing them they can meet challenges in various ways, he said. The third day a Rotary speaker explained the youth exchange programs to them.

 

Rhea said that at the end of the day they had tasks to do, such as build a tall tower and a bridge to hold ten pounds. Hers fell over right away, she said.

 

Vidushi said they had covered rock climbing walls and also had to walk across really thin wires. Partners had to lean on one another and balance to go along the wires, she said. It was hard at first, but then they learned how to proceed by working together, she said.

 

Rotary’s motto this year is Be a Gift to the World, and the students had to come up with a skit to show what it means to Be a Gift to the World, Vidushi said. Her group’s skit showed a bully making people unhappy and then kind people coming out to show that small acts of kindness can make this a better place, she said.

 

At the end of their program, the students held up a sign they had made thanking our club for the leadership learning experience. Rotary member John Beals is shown to the left in this picture.

 

Centerville Rotary Club President Brad Thorp presented each of the R.Y.L.A. participants with a coin bearing Rotary's 

Four-Way Test. He is explaining the meaning of the test words to the students in the picture below.

 

When Rhea’s mom was asked at the end of the meeting to draw the winning ticket in the weekly 50/50 raffle, she pulled John Beals’ ticket. The club members gave a roar. “Is it fair to all concerned?” called out one member. “Will it build better friendships?” said Lee Hieronymus….all in good nature, of course. With John heading up the R.Y.L.A. program and sitting with the group at the meeting,…the fact that one of the mothers pulled his ticket, caused the questions of the Four-Way-Test to be put into play….though some people are just darn lucky…as Mr. Callander has been recently in the raffle draw.