The Rotary Club of Kernersville, NC

Subject: Rotary Youth Leadership Academy

Mr. King:

I enjoyed talking with you today regarding my daughter, Abigail Thomas, and her experience in participating in the Rotary Youth Leadership Academy the week of July 17-21. As I expressed to you on the phone, this experience was one of the most enriching and best educational experiences that Abbi has ever had the chance to participate in. She attends East Forsyth High School and will be a senior this year. In the spring of this year she came home from school and told me she had been given information stating that she had been chosen to apply to attend "this Rotary Club leadership camp" and she wanted to complete the application. She filled it out and was excited to be chosen to attend. I knew this was a fairly big commitment, especially for a week of her summer vacation, but she was adamant that she wanted to attend.

What a week she had! I cannot express to you and all the other Rotary Club members, as well as community volunteers how much I appreciate the time, planning & organizing that you devoted to this exceptional week for our youth in the community! I am so very grateful that Abbi had the opportunity to participate. She learned so much about the history of Kernersville and we loved the historical book that was given to her. She enjoyed the WSFC school board members coming to meet with them. Visiting the Kernersville Police Station and the County Jail for the law enforcement session was an invaluable experience. She also thoroughly enjoyed meeting the Kernersville town mayor and hearing him speak. She was very impressed with Mr. Dudley's presentation and was excited to receive a copy of his book. She also spoke very highly of David Fitzpatrick speaking to the group as well. She was appreciative too of her principal, Ms. Gainey, coming over and meeting with the East kids as part of one session. They talked with her about establishing a Pep Club at East which she was very supportive of. Each and every day she came home very excited about what they had done for the day and would tell the entire family all about it. By the second day we were all anxiously waiting to hear what she had experienced for the day and so it went for the entire week! The fact that lunch was provided to them every day and transportation arrangements had been made for their trips away from the Swisher Center were very much appreciated. All of this at no cost to the youth or their parents - unbelievable!!

From a parent's standpoint I just felt that it was so important to convey to everyone involved with this leadership camp how very much my daughter benefited from it. Again, I cannot say thank you enough for providing such a wonderful learning experience for these youth. My youngest daughter, Caitlin, will be a freshman at East this year. I sincerely hope that in a couple of years she will have this same opportunity to attend the Rotary Youth Leadership Academy as well. I applaud your commitment to be involved with youth from our local community schools in such a positive way and I appreciate that East Forsyth provides this information to the students.

Thank you again and please convey my appreciation to all who were involved!

Sincerely,
Sandra Flynn (mother of Abigail Thomas)