During the Rotary Club of Knoxville’s meeting on Aug 14th at the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and Museum the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) Conference and Young Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (YRYLA) Camp recipients and participating Rotarians shared their experiences with club, parents, and school officials. Johanna Leonard, a 2017 YRYLA participant tells KNIA/KRLS News during the camp she learned that there are a lot of different types of people and a lot of different ways people work and that she needed to listen to everyone to learn how to help everybody succeed. Leonard says she took what she learned from the camp and used it to help organize a run to help give back to Helping Hands in Knoxville. 

The Knoxville Rotary Club has sponsored high school (RYLA Conference) starting in 2014 and middle school students (YRYLA Camp) since 2017 with 34 students attending primarily from Knoxville. The RYLA and YRYLA participants that attended the Knoxville Rotary Club meeting included,  Nikolle Kussatz (2019 YRYLA), Isabella Van Donselaar (2019 RYLA), Mason Murphy (2019 RYLA), Ethan Morgan (2019 YRYLA), Johanna Leonard (YRYLA Presenter), Ella Rankin (2019 YRYLA), Nash Linsley (2019 RYLA) and Faith Hatch (2019 RYLA). Recruiting and recommending students for 2020 RYLA-YRYLA will begin around February 2020.