Dear Mad River Valley Rotary Club,
I would like to start this letter off thanking you all for choosing me to go to RYLA. I can feel your support and it is just amazing. Thank you so much. I also realize that many of you don’t know me quite yet, so I'll take a minute to introduce myself. My name is Ella Scharf. I am 16 years old and live in Waterbury. I heard about RYLA in the TA announcements at Harwood and I was immediately interested. I believe that it was the same day that I reached out to Rosemarie to apply. A HUGE thank you, Rosemarie. You were so helpful and supportive and I’m so glad that we finally got to meet in person. I was taking a class in school at the time that was focusing on leadership skills and I really felt a strong connection to it and wanted to learn more. The announcement about RYLA couldn’t have had better timing.
During my time at RYLA, we spent most of the time there not only learning about leadership skills and practicing them but learning about ourselves as leaders. I would never have thought to do it with that approach, but I’m so glad we did. I learned that in order to be a good leader you have to spend time learning about yourself so you can lead the best you can. You also have to spend time learning about your peers and what they need. We did an activity called “True Colors”. Basically, you ask yourself questions off a sheet and once you fill everything out there is a score left behind that corresponds to your “true color”. There were four colors. Gold, blue, orange and green. Our color reflected how we all solve problems. I am a blue which is a dreamer. They are more compassionate. Oranges were adventurers and were more eager. Gold were the builders and were more organized. And then finally, the greens were more analytical. What the activity showed is that one way isn’t always the right way. - just the way right for you. To get the best fix for the problem, get people with all different styles and keep brainstorming until you find the solution.
I think my favorite part of the conference was actually all the people I met. To think that I knew everyone there for only like 50 hours, some of which we were asleep, and I have lifelong bonds with all of them. We have group chats on social media, share pictures and so many fantastic memories. I actually can’t talk enough about how amazing this experience was. Also, there was an incredible feeling of accomplishment that I felt when I left the weekend. We had an afternoon where we partnered with RISE against hunger and together we packaged over 20,000 meals. It still feels totally crazy to say that out loud! That was definitely a great experience for everyone involved, because it brought us so much closer while we immediately helped the community. We all had the same goal: to help. Nothing else mattered.
I thank you all so, so much for this experience and for sponsoring me. It is something that I will forever be grateful for.
Be well,
Ella Scharf