President's Message- RYLA

 

    For anyone who attended our meeting on January 13 you got to hear Katelyn Pierson make her first presentation about RYLA or Rotary Youth Leadership Awards.  Katelyn is a junior at UNE.  She seemed very comfortable speaking to us and did an excellent job describing what RYLA is about and the benefits that she and others have received from participating in the program.  For those of you who do not know we sponsor 3-4 RYLA participants each year at $300.00 per student.  It is clear to me that the support for those students is money well spent.  I suspect that RYLA is taking students who are good students and/or good athletes and it is making them good people who have the distinct prospect of becoming our community leaders of the future.

    After our meeting Joe Moreshead asked if we should try to get RYLA to incorporate our prospective Red Ribbon curriculum into the RYLA camp attended by the students each summer.  My response to Joe was as follows:

“I feel that RYLA has a proven formula that we should not mess with but we should readily support the program by sending more kids.  At the risk of sounding more and more like Andy, I think if we help support a program like RYLA that in and of itself promotes healthy choices, reflection and leadership skills we are absolutely doing the best thing we can to prevent substance misuse.  Andy, how did I do?  

 

Having said that, $300 per student for RYLA is a bargain and for every $1,000 we give a student for his or her second through fourth year in college we could be helping 3 kids go to RYLA to become potential leaders in the future as well as becoming healthy capable individuals.”

In response, Andy indicated that he “always believes in helping kids take steps in the direction we want rather than steps away from what we don’t want.”  Andy, what the hell?  I felt like I was reading a script from the old Kung Fu TV show.  All you needed was a reference to Grass Hopper.  Actually, I do understand his point.  If we encourage young people to be reflective, to get involved and to knowingly or unknowingly become leaders they will inevitably be in a better position to make their own good choices about things like drugs.

 

I truly believe that as we assess how we spend our money we should keep in mind the benefits attained from programs like RYLA.  RYLA helps to shape young lives and it helps to create the people who will continue to mold the lives of others as the RYLA graduates mature.  We should be aspiring to support such causes.

 

To support my point I wanted to share with you a letter we recently received from Madison Perry from Biddeford High School who was a RYLA participant.  Madison illustrates my point one thousand times better than I could do.