Sark RYLA Event Report

Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) is a recognised global Rotary youth development programme. Young people are selected for their leadership potential to attend a fully sponsored seminar to discuss leadership skills and hone them through practice.

The 2 Rotary Clubs in Guernsey, Rotary Guernesiais and the Rotary Club of Guernsey, have joined forces for a number of years to provide the funding to enable the Youth Commission in Guernsey to offer youngsters from the Bailiwick the chance to participate in a 3 day leadership and training residential camp in Sark under the banner of Sark RYLA.

This years successfully selected candidates were all 14/15 years of age and represented most of the secondary schools on Guernsey. The 3 day residential ran from Monday 3rd August to Wednesday 6th August. The selected 10 young people were supported by 3 members of the Youth Commission.

After taking the ferry to Sark, the group set up camp, and very quickly started on their programme of activities, from sessions on leadership, managing social media and presentations from well known local speakers including Adrian Sarchet, Poppy Murray and Ellie Jones.

The lectures were held in the 'The Sanctuary Hall' at the Methodist Church in Sark. These sessions were interspersed with outdoor activities including sea swimming, kayaking, an astronomy session, movie night and camp catering, as well as a meal out in a local restaurant!

On the Tuesday, a group of Rotarians from both of the Guernsey Clubs joined the interactive presentation given by Black Vanilla on modern day communication and social media. There was considerable engagement and interest by not only the students but by the Rotarians too!

It was a great opportunity for the Rotarians to see how their sponsorship was contributing to the young peoples education and learning skills and indeed our leaders of the future.

A very big thank you to everyone involved in making the event such a success and particularly Sacha and the team from the Youth Commission who planned and managed the activities and Ann Outram from Rotary Guernesiais who coordinated the initiative.

Thank you all.