For juniors Erika Cook and Jordan Alexander, facing the wilderness and a little bug spray is nothing when it comes to developing and expanding their leadership skills.

Last month, Cook and Alexander attended the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) program, which is a leadership camp hosted by the Rotary Club. One of RYLA’s goals is to help students become leaders so that they can bring those new skills back to their campuses. Over the course of three days, Cook and Alexander learned how to build communication skills, unlock and discover their leadership potential, and formed long-lasting friendships.

“While at RYLA, I learned how to work with others,” Cook said. “All of the activities we did helped us to learn effective communication, collaboration, and how to be a leader by using other’s ideas.”

While at camp, the students were separated into groups of 14 with people from all over Texas, including West Orange and Galveston. According to Alexander, they did everything with their assigned groups.

Trust exercises were a big part of the camp, beginning with a 6-foot trust fall. There were also several rope courses that the students participated in.

“My favorite part of the whole camp was the team building activities,” Cook said. “Each activity had a physical and mental challenge that we could overcome, only if we worked as a team.”

Alexander and Cook are both members of the LCM Interact Club and said they were able to bring back new ideas for service projects and ways to incorporate other groups in the school and community.

“It helps our club grow in that me and Erika both are bringing back skills that we learned there,” Alexander said.