Ain’t no party like a RYLA party ‘cause a RYLA party don’t stop!?
By PDG Jessica Smith, Rotary District 5750 RYLA Chair for 2027
Imagine traveling down a red dirt road near Guthrie and pulling into a true summer camp! Cabins. Ropes course. Ponds. Limitless amounts of some sort of mystery sugar drink. Teens clapping and repeating campy chants. Yes, it’s hot and dirty but it’s CAMP. Leave your phones at the main lodge. Drop your bag on your bunk bed in your cabin. Grab your fun color sunnies (& sunscreen & bug spray) then head outdoors.
Two weeks ago, dozens of teenagers from all over Rotary District 5750 were dropped off for a weekend of personal exploration and growth and a chance to really sit with who they are and who they want to become.
Our own Rotary District 5750 RYLA camp has been going strong for a little more than two decades. For those new to RYLA, it stands for Rotary Youth Leadership Awards and it is a youth leadership retreat. Through a long-standing and wildly successful partnership with Leader N U, RYLA campers learn about Power Skills – self-awareness and respect for differences, verbal and non-verbal communication, resource management, problem-solving and adaptability, and so on. It is life-changing, but not just to the campers. I have to admit that I’m hooked on RYLA!
Campers are assigned to teams led by former campers who have returned with training to be Counselors. There are also campers who return as Trailblazers who support with camp logistics like setting up areas for the nightly bonfire or serving meals to the camp. The pipeline of camper to trailblazer to counselor is very competitive, and towards the end of our time at RYLA camp, the buzz about wanting to return for next year’s RYLA is electric.
My personal experience with RYLA up until about 2016 was limited to bringing up chili for the annual RYLA chili cook-off (which my mom won one year!). Rotarians – like you – are invited out each year to participate. Fitting for chili, the winner this year won a brand new crockpot! Joe Dorman from our club and Marc Thompson from the Midwest City Rotary Club and I helped get it all set up and going this year.
A unique memory that I will take away from this year’s RYLA was relying on one of our RYLA team counselors, Seth Stines, a Ph.D. candidate studying nuclear engineering, to safely organize the power strips between our 24 crockpots during the chili cook-off. I had the pleasure of chauffeuring Seth from the airport to RYLA camp. He returned to Oklahoma to help with RYLA in our district – again. That says a lot.
When we ask you next year to bring chili to RYLA for the cook-off, know that you are really being invited to peek into an exhilarating and life-changing opportunity to see how Rotary changes lives of our future Rotarians, the campers, trailblazers, and team counselors. I promise that those who take the time and effort to travel down that red dirt road to Twin Cedars camp to experience RYLA will see what I mean!
There are no comments published yet.