Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu:

Youth is the most important phase in one’s life. It is the turning point in life where you give direction to your life; make up your mind to win and determine yourself to be successful. It is here that your personality gets moulded and it is here you can make or break your career. Rotary believes that today’s youth becomes tomorrow’s leader but preparing those future leaders is definitely a tremendous task. Keeping this in view The Rotary Club has made commitments in developing youth for the future by honouring the youth of today for their contributions and potential in a series of programmes under Rotary Youth Leadership Awards.

Rotary has a variety of programmes for the youth and RYLA is one of them. It is an intensive training programme for youth leaders, meant to address varying needs and maturity levels. RYLA programmes may vary from one community to the next depending upon the needs of a particular community and upon the age group of awardees and the length of the programme. The age group of the participants is 14-30 years though most programmes focus on a narrow range within that scope. The wider the range, the bigger is the difference in the level of wisdom of awardees. As regards the selection of awardees, Rotary encourages to include economically and socially disadvantaged youth with leadership potentials. It is also important that RYLA participants possess some basic qualifications such as leadership experience demonstrated through participation in youth groups or service activities, cooperative nature and willingness to participate in a group, awareness of current events, strong communication skills, good performance in school or work and enthusiasm for sharing new found skills with others.

RYLA programmes offer awardees to get exposure to issues and exchange of ideas with thoughtful people in an atmosphere free from distraction to explore new career paths or learn more about their chosen fields through discussions with successful adults. They also get an opportunity to meet Rotary decision-makers in their community and find out more about other Rotary programmes for young people. So far two events of RYLA programme have been organized in 2001 and 2004. The third event is planned at a regional level to include all 31 Rotary districts of the SAARC countries. It is scheduled to start from May 7 to May 12, 2005 at Budanilkantha School.