Speaker Meeting, 6.15 for 6.30pm

RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards) is a leadership development program which focuses on secondary school students, university students, or young professionals. RYLA events are typically 3–10 days long and cover a variety of topics including:

• Leadership fundamentals and ethics
• Communication skills
• Problem solving and conflict management
• Community and global citizenship

Sadly our RYLA candidate this year had to drop out but Pershore Club offered us their reserve candidate, Tess Reay, who is delighted to be given this chance by Swindon North.  Accompanied by her father and Pershore Club Rotary member Brian “Kit” Carson, she came to this meeting to introduce herself and to address our members.  

Rotarian Kit Carson brought greetings from Pershore Rotary Club and said they were grateful to us giving Tess her RYLA experience.  He handed a club banner to President Ann.

Tess said she is studying Media Studies and Drama and is hoping to gain work experience during the summer holidays.   Her career goal is to be involved with Events Management and she hopes to achieve this in employment rather than attending University. She has just completed her Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award and is looking forward to the RYLA course and to meeting people and to the activities.  She is also looking forward to being part of a team and to be a team leader although she likes to encourage people to be leaders too,

President Ann asked Tess how she felt abut not being able to use her mobile phone on the course – she said it didn’t worry her!!!

Tess is a very worthy candidate and we are looking forward to her return visit when she will share her experience with us.