By Staff
Dowagiac Rotary Club Feb. 24 heard from the five students who participated in the 2005 Life Leadership camp program.
Life Leadership gives the club an opportunity to send local high school students to enhance their abilities to solve problems, to work as a team, to learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of their own leadership styles and to increase their self-confidence.
Over the past five years, Dowagiac Rotary Club has sent 24 student leaders to participate in this program at YMCA Camp Algonquin in Hastings.
Rotarian Doug Stickney introduced Brittany Fuller, Denise Green, Kim Luthringer, Lindsay Tyler and Rotary Exchange Student Daniel Kollar of Hungary to share their experiences.
Rotary also sponsors PolioPlus, Rotary Park, Rotary Villa, Walk for Life and Southwestern Michigan College boys and girls basketball tournaments.
Brittany, 17, who is home-schooled, said she had a "blast." They started with an introductory name game to get to know each other, then went outside for a "blindfolded adventure." The front of a line figured out how to share information with those in back of the line, overcoming obstacles to communication to become a team.
They had to write a paper on, "What it's like to be a failure."
Denise Green of Cassopolis is also home-schooled. Based on other programs she attended, "I expected to be sitting in meetings listening to old guys tell us, 'When I was young, we did this.' But instead, it was different and from it I found out that I'm a communicator."
Kim Luthringer said she had heard great remarks from past students, which made her anxious to attend.
Activities which helped included the blind walk, the balance beam, learning about personalities, a rope activity without ringing bells, a harness with buckets of water with the goal of not spilling individually or as a team, a beach ball game, boats in two groups to an island, where there was a rope course, the "trust fall," where they passed one another down a line, and a rock wall climb.
Lindsay, 17, of DUHS, said, "I've done lots in my life, but nothing adds up to the experiences I had at Life Leadership camp. I enjoyed the interactivity with other team members."
Lindsay also enjoyed the up-and-over. She had to restart many times, and after each activity they talked about what succeeded and what failed.
She said it gave her the attitude to not quit, but to look for creative ways to accomplish challenging tasks.
Daniel said his challenge was to "think less and do more."
He recalled that the camp took place on the nastiest weekend in October.
It was cold, rainy and windy, but there were lots of private one-on-one conversations with everyone.
He especially enjoyed talking with other exchange students.