RYLA

The Rotary Club of St Andrews heard a very interesting talk given by Aenghus  McGregor a sixth year senior prefect at St Leonard’s School. He had been chosen by the Rotary Club to take part in the Rotary Youth Leadership Award (RYLA) in July at the Abernethy Trust’s Outdoor and Adventure Centre at Ardeonaig overlooking Loch Tay.

The aim of RYLA is to encourage the development of teamwork and leadership skills in young people. This is done by making use of a residential experience and outward bound activities which in turn encourages the boys to work effectively with others and provide leadership opportunities in practical situations.

Aenghus admitted that he was quite apprehensive about taking part in this experience as he knew no one else going on the trip. However once the boys arrived at the centre they quickly settled in and every morning they had a lecture from a very inspirational speaker covering the topics such as leadership and coping in adversity.

The rest of each day was given over to activities such as rock climbing, touch rugby, raft building and hill walking. Each of these activities was organised by one of the boys who became the team leader.

This enabled each boy to build a team spirit to enable them to work effectively and to encourage and support each other in the task. Each boy was learning and evaluating his performance every day.

Aenghus told us all that RYLA had been a life changing experience for him. He now felt far more confident and was glad to have been given the chance to meet up with so many other boys from different parts of Scotland whom he now meets up with regularly. He summed up his talk up by saying a big thank you to Rotary for giving him this experience which had been the best week of his life.

Colin Mitchell thanked Aenghus for his inspirational talk and applauded him for taking this opportunity to take part in this adventure.