Over the weekend, we hosted 68 students from all high schools and colleges in Auckland to a 2 day RYPEN Camp.
 
The Rotary Youth Program of Enrichment (RYPEN) is a Youth Leadership over a weekend long camp for Year 12 and 13 students, aged between 14 - 17 years old, designed at developing young people’s potential through a mixture of lecture style sessions and adventure-based learning.
 
RYPEN is designed for students who are seen as the upcoming leaders in your school, not those students who are already leading and achieving amazing things or those at the bottom end, but those students who just need a bit of a push and a confidence boost to start achieving at their full potential.
 
RYPEN has as its principal aim, to communicate to young people taking part in the program a series of ideas, problems and social experiences which will assist them in forming their own values and moral standards and allow them to broaden their horizons culturally, socially and academically. Nothing is forced upon the young people – they are free to discuss and interpret what they experience and above all, the Rotarians or Leaders who are involved in running the conference do not patronise them.
 
 
At the camp, e invited Ben Dowdle as guest speaker  (https://bendowdle.com/about/bio/) to talk to the students about the campaign "Unmask Palm Oil".
 
The students found the topic inspiring and would like to support Ben in his cause. We have since wrote and emailed the letter to Simon O’Connor, MP for Tamaki and this morning, I received a reply from Simon who will forward to the relevant Minister and ask for a reply.
 
Thank you to all those that have helped in many ways at the camp.