2011 Young RYLA- General Evaluation

Sunday:

· Registration: Set up went well, too much time at some spots created the line. Warn everyone before hand that we need to get the process done quickly; chatting for long with each kid just doesn’t fit in our time limits.

· Circle of Support went well

· Brainwise- counselor skits were phenomenal this year, super interactive and entertaining. Next year I would advise putting some sort of bookmark or worksheet in the binder so they can be writing them down as they learn.

Monday:

· Team Building Activities/ Towers/ Swept Away/  My Life List- all went well from an organizational standpoint, JC’s would know better.

· Corey Ciocchetti- fantastic! Kids, JC’s, SC’s, visitors… everyone loved him

Tuesday:

· Matrix: Organizationally all seemed to go well, because of running Choices I was unable to see the other activities, below are some of the comments I heard.

o Choices- went well, needs to be more interactive for the kids. FBL clips are fantastic and the conversations were meaningful.

o Challenge Course/ Zipline- kids loved these but it seems like the Ponderosa Staff didn’t do a great job this year, I would advise talking with them before hand about expectations for debrief, attitude, etc.

o Four Way Test- again some of the kids seemed to really enjoy, others thought it was very boring. Sometimes the Rotarians who are brought in do not quite flow with the rest of the magic. May be a good idea to really evaluate having outside Rotarians come in.

o Finding My Voice- the kids LOVED Finding My Voice

· Movie: The Blindside: Seemed to go over very well with the kids

Wednesday:

· Walk of Possibilities: Michael Donahue did not show up but from what I heard (another activity I didn’t see) this went very well, may be a good idea to just have Joni, Wally, etc run this in the future.

· Global Stations: As a new program this went decently well. The JC’s did a good job getting information to the kids and the games seemed to be very fun. We need to make it more interactive as kids learn better if they are doing more than being lectured at. Still, telling them about the countries may be the best we can do. It would be good to give the kids more time at each station and also to spread the stations out. Having all 6 in Allison was way too loud making it hard for any of the kids to learn much. I think if this is tweaked it could be an extremely valuable program, teaching the kids about other lifestyles outside their own and also getting them thinking as a precursor to Call to Action.

· Camp Hike: Fantastic, proved so many of us wrong J

· Take a Look Around: Seemed to go very well. The timing and emotions seemed to be balanced well and the music used afterwards was very effective.

Thursday:

· Sunrise Hike- Awesome. Next year bring a long something a little better to read at the top.

· All Conference Pictures: It worked very well to only do the all conference at this time! Good job Wayne.

· Youth For Biodiversity: I think the tweaks that were made to make this about turning Passion into Action were very well done. I still think some of the kids lost interest because of the timing of the presentation. It could be useful to have more about the method of how anyone can turn passion into action and have slightly shorter stories. I think this is a program that we really need to evaluate the objective and effectiveness of for the future.

· Comedy Club: Skits were not especially entertaining this year J. I think by asking the kids to focus on Brainwise some of the silly was taken away. Either way it is fine, the objective just needs to be evaluated. Doing this Thursday morning instead of Wednesday night was very valuable.

· Rotary Youth Programs: I think these went really well, Shelter Box could be more interactive but the kids seemed to enjoy learning about the different programs.

· Goofy Olympics: Again, went well. The timing (10 mins/ stations) seemed about right and the JC’s did a great job running the games despite their exhaustion. The kids seemed to have a lot of fun.

· Call to Action: I think the tweaks we made in Call to Action this year made a big step. The forum seemed to work very well for some of the groups and the real life scenarios used after Wally’s presentation were a good precursor. I think both the JC’s and conferees needed a little better understanding of the goal of the process and how to mesh the scenarios with creating a plan. I think more training needed to be done for the JC’s to help them understand how to run this program and how to make it effective. More time would also be beneficial as good conversation sometimes took the place of creating a concrete plan.

· Twilight Time before the Dance seemed to be beneficial- there were problems with the Team in Allison because of teams coming into their Twilight Time. This needs to be adjusted by moving that team or having specific times that the kids are allowed to go that everyone follows strictly.

· Dance: SO FUN!

Friday:

· River Crossing: went well.

· Circle of Friends. The meaning behind this activity is so very important but this year it was cut much too short. The circles only moved 4 times making the activity extremely short and allowing them very few people to thank. Maybe we need to shorten River Crossing cause I think this is very important.

· Closing Time with Teams: The teams needed to have their materials for making bracelets (string, scissors, lighters) before hand so that staff members were not scrambling to get them materials and so that they had the entire time to do the compliment web and make bracelets. Otherwise, I think this was an important addition to Friday.

· Closing Speakers: Great

· Slideshow: The effects and pictures were done extremely well this year. I think it would be good to have more events and less pictures of each in the slideshow. Also to use more of the songs used at camp.

Some general observations:

· Inventory was not done well. This needs to be checked and double checked in the future as we were missing some of the things we needed. Also, putting together kits on Saturday night for each JC with markers, scissors, warm fuzzy bags, tape, glue, My Proudest Achievement paper, labels and sheet holders, Swept Away stickies and markers, bracelet string and lighters and anything else the JC’s might need throughout the week would be extremely helpful. This way staff members don’t have to run materials around to every team for all the different activities.

· Words of Focus were fantastic this year… video those babies in the future!

· Music, penguin races and camp songs were great this year, kept the energy very high and created a strong sense of community in Allison.

· Morning activities seemed to go well along with Twilight Time and snack delivery.