She reflects on the experience, the impact, and the lessons she walked away with from the week-long camp.
A month on and I still struggle to find the words to accurately and effectively describe my experience at the Rotary Youth Leadership Academy (RYLA). I left RYLA feeling more like myself than I ever had before. I went home feeling empowered and valued, and most of all, I felt connected to who I wanted to be. Aside from all else, it was a week I will cherish forever.
My opportunity to be one of the RYLA 2025 awardees was a spontaneous one that could not have come at a better time. A mysterious, phoneless week out at Willow Park and an extensive list of gear had me eagerly anticipating a life changing experience. My anticipation was attached to the hope that answers would fall into my lap - that someone would tell me which decisions were the right ones to make and that I would leave as an awardee no longer feeling the weight of life’s decisions. It was, without a doubt, a life-changing week, but not as I had originally anticipated.
Hearing that a mere seven days out of twenty-two years were “life-changing” might seem like an over-exaggeration, but when those seven days are filled with self-reflection, collaboration and perseverance, you arrive home excited to spend the rest of your life exercising a new outlook. Life-changing for me looked like the weight of life's decisions being reframed to become fuel for growth and change.
At RYLA, one hundred and seventeen like-minded individuals were fortunate enough to hear from people that approach their lives as an experience they are a participant of, not a victim to. By focusing on the things in their lives that they can change and leaning into the discomfort of situations, these ordinary people stood in front of us as proof that an easy and meaningful life comes from discomfort and hard choices. As they spoke, our cohort would scribble down impactful ideas and the hall felt united in the inspiration we all felt to be the best versions of ourselves.
Simultaneously, these powerful presentations were filled with concepts tied to leadership. Each idea was laid out for us to consider in the contexts of leadership of oneself and leadership of others. Throughout each presentation there was an underlying idea that who we are is how we lead, and it became apparent that to be a leader you must first lead yourself. These perspectives on leadership set a tone of vulnerability in discovering who we are and how we lead ourselves. As activities throughout the week became challenging for us individually and in teams, a particular concept stuck with me; growth and adversity cannot coexist.
With such a perfectly formulated week, filled with every opportunity to learn from and with others, challenge yourself and develop individually, I felt so connected to myself and who I wanted to be and I had accepted that a weakness is only such if it is getting in the way of success. By the end of the week I had realised I was doing myself a disservice by not participating in my own life which then followed hand in hand with a new understanding that I am allowed to be selfish about believing in myself. Furthermore I felt fulfilled after engaging with people who also aimed to be better versions of themselves in hopes to lead change in our communities and the world.
Even though answers didn’t fall into my lap and no one told me which decisions to make, I left with empowering tools to find my own answers and let go of my doubts. For this and so much more, I feel so privileged and honoured to be a 2025 Rotary Youth Leadership Awardee.
The amount of gratitude I have for everyone and everything that allowed this experience to be possible exceeds what words can describe. I’m thankful to PMAG for selecting me for such an amazing opportunity, thankful to Downtown Rotary Club for supporting RYLA and I am so thankful to everyone at RYLA for creating a life changing week.