October 24, 2007

As usual, the Deposit Rotary Club has been busy organizing and running its meetings, projects, and programs. On October 10, we had the pleasure of having last summer's Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) students as guests at our weekly lunch meeting. Amelia Blair, Lindsey Wagner, and Kimberly Bosket were the guests of Pete Hempstead, who organizes Deposit's delegation to the annual RYLA conference held at Hartwick College in Oneonta. Local Rotary clubs sponsor students from their home communities to attend the week-long conference to give them a great opportunity to develop their leadership potential while meeting other accomplished young people from around the area.

Every year, high school juniors from Deposit are selected after an application and interview process to represent their school at the annual conference. Once at Hartwick, they are divided up into groups of about 15 students, purposely separated from the students they already know so that they are given the chance to forge new bonds and friendships. Amelia recalled that she met lots of new people this way, which was greatly beneficial in developing new leadership skills. Kim Bosket told our club that she is a participant in New Visions, a program administered by Broome-Tioga BOCES to give high school seniors access to experiences in the profession of their choice, whether it be health care, communications, law, or education. She said that she regularly sees other RYLA alumni at New Visions and so she is able to sustain the friendships she formed there. Lindsey told us that she still sees RYLA alumni at school sporting events and in this way, RYLA has contributed to deeper connections between students of different districts. Each of the girls commented on how good the experience was at making them not fear, but rather look forward to, college and the experience of living with new people in a residence hall.

On October 17, I had the particular delight of having my dance students perform at our meeting. Kyley Vandermark performed a ballet piece and Airin Rynearson presented her tap solo. Then, my adult dancers, Sandra Davis, Ellen Ficurilli, Sheila Katen, Phyllis Baker, and fellow Rotarian Brenda Lee tore up the floor with their piece "You Don't Own Me" from last summer's recital. I was immensely proud of the dancers and this, combined with our other activities, made me deeply proud to be a member of our own local Rotary Club. More to come next week!