Youth Committee
Supporting youth in our communities
The Rotary Club of Vancouver identifies youth as our future leaders. We aim to provide leadership and personal development opportunities to youth through Rotary supported programs, provide financial support to historically underserved youth to further their education and betterment, promote youth literacy, and support youth programs with annual fundraising
Rotary’s youth programs are focused on kids, teenagers and young adults.
Rotary Youth Exchange
Our club sponsors a student aged 15-19 to exchange with another youth from one of more than 100 countries around the world. During their year-long exchange, they will have the opportunity to learn a new language, discover another culture, and truly become a global citizen.
Interact
We sponsor high school-based clubs that bring together young people aged 12-18 and encourage them to develop leadership skills through the lens of Service Above Self.
Rotaract
We sponsor university-based (Rotaract Club of Vancouver – UBC) and community-based (Vancouver Young Professionals Rotaract) Rotaract clubs to connect like-minded young adults aged 18 and older to build leadership experience, applicable professional experience all through Rotary’s service-based lens.
Rotary Youth Leadership Award
We sponsor three different RYLA events here in British Columbia that provide an event-based intensive leadership experience. Participants attend workshops with other people their age that allow them to develop their leadership skills and motivate them to make change in their communities. We sponsor RYLA Lakelse (ages 14-15), RYLA South (ages 16-18) and RYLA North (ages 18-30).
Adventures in Citizenship
We sponsor senior high school students to travel to Ottawa along with 200 other students from across the nation to engage in political discourse, attend lectures, tour Parliament and build relationships with other young people who are inspired to contribute to Canadian citizenship.
Adventures in Healthcare
We encourage youth to explore their interest in health programs with the Adventures in Health Care program. A multi-day experience where students in grade 10 and 11 explore the reality of careers in health sciences and give them a realistic understanding of what types of challenges you face in this type of field.
Pacific Canada Experience
We contribute to PACE, a Rotaract Roundtrip based in District 5040 invites 6 young adults from across the world to experience what life is like in Canada hosted by local Rotaractors. The week-long immersive program tours the sites of Vancouver, Whistler and Victoria and is hosted in the homes of Rotarians with volunteers to be their guides.
Gladstone
Stay in School Scholarships
RCoV works with school counselors and educators at Gladstone Secondary School to identify grade 10 and 11 students who are unlikely to pursue further education due to financial constraint. We provide two $10,000 awards annually to encourage students to continue to pursue post-secondary education along with smaller bursaries. To date the Rotary Club of Vancouver has funded over $300,000 to this program from the RCoV Foundation.
Youth Literacy
Dictionaries for Youth
In collaboration with the Dictionary Project, we donate dictionaries for youth at John Norquay Elementary School and Britannia Secondary School. Many of the recipients of these dictionaries are youth who don’t have access to the internet at home and some may have learned English as a second language. Reading is the only way out of poverty and a dictionary is a companion that helps people understand what they are reading; they are a reliable resource for a student learning the English language.
Youth Literacy
iPads for Youth
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, we found that many students were left disconnected from their classrooms with no access to technology at home. We quickly mobilized and were able to provide several of the students at John Norquay Elementary School with iPads so they could continue receiving their education during the stay at home orders.
Girls Who Leap & Boys Who Dare
Hoop-a-Thon
We support the Rotary Club of Vancouver-Sunrise in their efforts to host the annual Hoop-a-thon in support of the Girls Who Leap and Boys Who Dare programs.
These programs support youth in the Downtown Eastside and Grandview Woodlands communities and provide structured mentorship and leadership opportunities through the lens of sport. The basketball-based programs help to set these students up for success by nurturing life skills, building meaningful connections and purposefully impacting our community. The students coming out of these programs go on to achieve great things both in sport and their careers that are made possible by these programs.
