Hello all. Another great week of Rotary. We continue to serve our communities in big and small ways. We are making a difference.

 

I spent this past week as part of the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) conference at Messiah University. What an awesome event! (Scroll down to see more details) We had 84 high school rising-seniors particpate this week who were sponsored by 29 clubs. I am impressed with RYLA as a leadership education conference. Thank you to our sponsoring clubs and Rotarians who paid for the students to attend. Thank you to the RYLA committee led by Corey Graybill (Eastern York) for the work to promote, fund, administer, and conduct the conference. Thank you to Gary Crissman (Hershey) for creating a wonderful program for these exceptional student leaders. We further thanked Gary at our closing program for his more than 25 years of service to our RYLA program. He has left us an awesome program and a legacy of student leaders, some of whom have returned as counselors and staff in the RYLA program. Thank you to the resident Rotarians who spent the week with us – Carmen Calderon (Passport) and Heather Steavens-Jones (Passport) – and provided their own inspiring leadership examples to the students. We had a great group of leadership and vocational speakers, Rotarians and non-Rotarians, who taught and inspired us all with their stories and words of wisdom. Bravo to each of them and thank you to Carmen for finding our vocational speakers and to Steph Acri (Mechanicsburg North) for the leadership speakers. We told the RYLA students to return to their sponsoring clubs to report on their experiences. You’ll be inspired when you hear them speak. What a gem RYLA is for Rotary!

 

Please remember to be vigilant in your cyber security measures. Last week a few Rotarians received an email posing as me to ask to support a $1500 donation. As happened last fall, this email came from an email account that is not mine but did go to Rotarians in the district. Whether Rotary or other organizations, be suspicious of emails and text messages that just “pop in” that you are not expecting. These may well be phishing attempts to get you to reply or click on something that then grabs your contacts or other information to further the phishing scheme. I get these emails too and it is maddening. Sorry this happens in our district.

 

Only about two weeks left in this Rotary year. Hard to believe how fast it has gone. I am grateful for all the Rotarians I have met and worked with this year. Thank you to the club presidents and club officers who are the true leaders in Rotary. Your leadership this year has been awesome!

 

Thanks for all you do in Rotary. I’ll see you around the district.

 

DG Fred.