Article submitted to the Dalgety Bay Diary, November 2011

The Rotary Club of Inverkeithing and Dalgety Bay

With support from rotary
club members, and hotel staff, students from Inverkeithing High School
took over the catering at the Queensferry Hotel to serve up a special
Halloween  meal to diners. In ''Operation
Takeover'', a joint venture between the High School and the rotary club, 22
students took over the planning, preparation, cooking and presentation of a
three course dinner to 90 customers at the end of October.   Dishes featured included parsnip and sweet
potato soup, chicken Balmoral and a vegetarian curry.  The Halloween theme continued with desserts
which featured chocolate hearts with mint stakes, jelly with ''worms'' and
''bloody'' raspberry sorbet. The idea of the evening grew out of the rotary
club's Young Chef competition in which a number of High School students have
participated in recent years. The competition encourages students to develop
cooking and organisational skills and Stuart Grant, general manager at the
Queensferry Hotel, thought that an evening event organised and executed by the
students would be a further challenge. The evening was organised by Diane Rigg
and Hamish Hardie of the rotary club, Catriona Cairney teacher of home
economics and hospitality at the High School and Kirsy Dodds, events manager at
the hotel. Students were asked to apply for positions as chefs and waiting
staff and were fully involved in planning the menus, preparing and cooking the
food and in serving the meals. The school's art department created the tickets
for the event, advertising posters, menus and name badges and entertainment was
provided by drama and music students.  Dalgety Bay students involved in the very
successful evening included Kieron Scrimger, Charlie Simpson, Vicky Murray,
Fraser Sutherland, Harry Hewitt, Sophie Lock, Rebecca Minty, Kirsty Wallace and
Derryn Russell. 

In last month's Diary
mention was made of the presentations
High School students
Joanna Kennedy and Alistair Davis made to the rotary club on their experiences
at the Rotary Youth Leadership course they attended at the Nethybridge Outdoor
Centre, near Aviemore in July.  Joanna
has now written the following note for the Diary on her RYLA experiences. 

''RYLA was a phenomenal
and enlightening experience for me. It was both physically and mentally
challenging, but also exceptionally enjoyable and rewarding. The week at the
Nethybridge Outdoor Centre was packed full of adventurous activities such as
climbing, gorge walking and hiking while each morning we received a
presentation on leadership skills from various inspiring speakers. In the
evenings we played games of 'Nethy ball' (a local variation on volley ball) and
participated in debates and discussions. As the Centre is a Christian run
organisation  many of the other girls and
I spent the majority of the evenings having fascinating philosophical
discussions about faith and Christianity. 

We were split into teams
of 10 for the duration of the week. Strong bonds formed between each team and
we all developed our own team identity. Over the week we competed for points
through debates, sports days and challenge courses. As a member of Team 7, I
would have to say we were the best. However Team eight seemed to be declared
the overall winners at the end of the week!

A
presentation by Dr Graham Clark encouraged us to change our assumptions about
leadership. He said the biggest mistake a leader makes is to storm ahead with
the idea that he or she is the most important member of the team.  The key to effective leadership is
delegation. Most of the time a leader is able to lead from the back, allowing
the members of the team to flourish on their own. During our activities we all
became more aware of where we were in comparison to the rest of the group and
how this affected our teamwork, especially during activities such as hiking and
mountain biking.

 "The only real training for leadership is
leadership." - Anthony
Jay

I
believe this quote illustrates the purpose of RYLA. To allow us to develop as
successful leaders we were told by our speakers the key skills required by a
leader, and then given the opportunity to enhance them in a safe environment.
Each member of the team was designated as the team leader for different
activities. I led raft building, in which we had to build a raft from barrels
and logs. The activity required us to plan together as a team which meant I had
to facilitate the discussions.''

Alistair
has also reported that he had an amazing time at the RYLA ''camp''. He forged a
number of new friendships and is still in contact with many of the students he
met there. The rotary club has sponsored a number of students on the RYLA
course and all have found the experience to be both enjoyable and
rewarding.  Any 5^th year High
School student who may be interested in attending next year's RYLA Course at
Nethybridge, or who would like more information on the course, should contact rotarian
Dr Ken Ritchie on 01383 413508.