RYLA International Conference in Montreal, Canada

Review by Peter Thompson

Catherine was invited to be a facilitator at the above conference, a great honour and an acknowledgement of her dedication and professionalism in organising RYLA camps for our District. She had attended an earlier conference in Los Angeles, this current one had a greater diversity of attendees, but unfortunately less facilitators.

The conference was a five day residential at the Magill University campus, with 120 youth, 14 facilitators from around the world, and three staff from RI Evanston. RI hosted the conference in the University’s dormitory complex, attendees were sponsored by their Rotary District but facilitators had to pay their own travel costs.

RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards) is an Australian initiation formed in 1968, adopted worldwide in 1972. It aims to have attendees discover and develop their leadership capabilities and initiative to equip them for the future.

The age group for attendees in Australia is 18-25, internationally it is 18-30, therefore slightly more mature persons were present, many with prior Rotary experience. A little chaotic at the beginning as it took nearly 36 hours for all to arrive.

On the first day, facilitators had to attend training to have common procedures in place to enable the conference to flow freely through the agenda but with Catherine supplying a prepared manual, they all adjourned to a local pub for their only night free.

The opening task for attendees was to design a method where-by a raw egg could be dropped from the top of a tall building onto a hard surface below without breaking. Some were successful!

The major project was to have attendees produce a WAPI (water purification indicator) – an USA idea of having certain chemicals sealed in an small glass tube which when immersed in water and boiled, changed colour when the water was fit to drink.

Facilitators took 10 minutes to produce one, the young attendees organised themselves into a production team and 120 enthusiastic participates produced 250 WAPIs in two hours.

On the second night, at a Cultural Market, 32 individual groups presented information on their country, by either brochures, costumes, food etc.

The 120 young people were split into groups to give a presentation on the subject ‘what will happen in the world in 2030’. English is the Rotary language but Catherine’s group, called Calgary, with acknowledgment to the bi-lingual culture of Canada presented both in English and French.

The Calgary Group set a task to resolve the effect that global awareness of literacy of children would have on the world in 2030. They found that if there was universal childhood literacy the whole world would be a much better place, not just for the children but for the whole universe. This simple but profound reasoning will be expounded by all attendees when they return to their home countries to spread it around the world.

Final night was turned over to a great night of music, dancing and socialising which lasted most all night, and although there was no restriction on any one leaving the complex, all stayed. Next morning 60% made arrangements to register for the coming week’s Rotary International Conference.

Catherine concluded her presentation by stating how she was very privileged to have been involved with such a marvellous group of young people and that our Club and the District should at the next international gathering aim to have one of our own Awardee present.