Youth Services Memorandum
REGARDING:Advanced RYLA
FROM:Justin Phillips, Youth Services Chair District 7980
DATE:15 January 2015
I am saddened to announce that the Advanced RYLA program has been suspended until further notice. This has been a difficult decision for both the leadership team and myself.
Firstly, Advanced RYLA was designed with the idea first and foremost to provide a needed service and to challenge an age group of 19+ years of age. We did this and the datareflects thatwe haveachieved thisgoal with great success.
Secondly, we wanted to provide a real life experience (MIC- Modern Issues Challenge) to bring awareness and to allow for an exciting and engaging ‘think tank’ business entrepreneurship approachto solving issues in our local community. ARYLA then becomes a hands-on experience, training leaders and actually implementing the newly created ‘company’ projects. This was to be done using Rotary as a foundation and the community to support our leaders. This has been a challenge to accomplish due to several reasons:
- The local area support has declined over the past 3 ARYLA conferences. Referencing the below graphs you will notice that the demographics have changed drastically over the last three years. We have gone from 100% Connecticut participants to 25% of the attendees arriving from Connecticut. Although not shown, the funding is still primarily coming from District 7980 Rotary Clubs. Our quality 5-day program was set to increase to $820 in 2015. (Looking at comparable programs, you would have to pay several thousand dollars for this experience.) The $820 amount however is still a significant amount of funding for a number of our Rotary Clubs and for them the return was not justifiable.
- Additionally, due to the change in demographics, the projects targeting local activities were struggling for teamwork amongst the former attendees because of the spread over the 9 countries represented over the last two years. The projects were not the success we hoped for. A new model will be required moving forward.
- There was a lack of resources available for follow up post-conference.
Thirdly, our template needs to be altered to meet the needs of the increasing number of international attendees coming into the conference. The courses we were providing, such as resume building, business etiquette and business models, need to be updated to remain vigilant to who our audience is.
Finally, when these ideas and challenges were presented to future leadership for District 7980, the conference was, in general, not supported with our financial model.
On a personal note, I am grateful to all the former ARYLA participants who have become ‘family’ to me. I would also like to thank the numerous volunteers who comprised my team. You are all second to none and I have learned so much from all of you.
I am extremely proud of what we have accomplished with ARYLA and do only see this as a major success. My hope is to continue to hear of the impact we have made in the lives of the past 100+ participants and in particular, how the education you received has been passed on to help others with your Service Above Self. I am immensely proud of the goals we have accomplished.
Sincerely,
Justin Phillips
Youth Services Chair District 7980 &
Founder of Advanced Rotary Youth Leadership Awards