District 5240 Rotary Youth Leadership Awards 2025 is now in the past.
What is RYLA you might ask? From the District 5240 website:
“Each year, thousands of young people take part in the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) program worldwide. Young people are chosen for their leadership potential to attend an all-expenses-paid camp to discuss leadership skills and to learn those skills through practice. Rotary clubs and districts select participants and facilitate the event’s curriculum."
The RYLA 2025 Awards Ceremony. Photo courtesy of
David Saint-Amand.
David Saint-Amand.
Every year the Rotary Club of China Lake sponsors four high school students to attend the camp. The students head down to Camp Ramah in Ojai as strangers and return to Ridgecrest as friends among the many new friends they made while at camp. The relationships formed can be so close that one group of RYLA graduates, now in their 30s, still meet every year on the Oxnard Coast to get together and share their lives.
Our own Julia Morse was a camp counselor this year, a role she enjoys nearly every year.
Your membership in the Rotary Club of China Lake supports our sponsorships and makes a tremendous difference in the lives of the youth of our community.
For more information on RYLA in District 5240, visit: https://ryla5240.org