Six Bermudian students willingly tied themselves into knots at the end of April as part of a Rotary Club youth leadership scheme.

Making human knots was just one of a series of fun leadership exercises the students tried out at the Rotary Youth Leadership Camp held in Alpine, New Jersey from April 27 to 29.

The Sandys Rotary Club sent several young Bermudians to join 35 other teenagers from around the world.

“I liked the knots activity the most,” said Somersfield Academy student Kirsten Spencer-Arscott, 15. “This is where you stand in a circle and you have to grab the hand of the person in front of you, and then you have to try and untangle yourselves.”

Activities like this were designed to encourage communication, teamwork and co-operation.

In another activity called the Lego challenge, students were assigned various roles such as looker, runner, supplier, manager and builder. The students had to carry out their functions, while working together to build a Lego model from a box.

“A lot of our activities were based on communication,” Kirsten said. “I learned a lot about different cultures, and how different people react to different experiences. I also learned how to make great s’mores.”

She learned to make the s’mores during a Saturday fun night when students had a camp fire and a talent show.

Sandys Rotarian Malcolm Griffiths said students were first selected by their schools as potential candidates for the camp, and then the Rotary Club picked from that group. “We usually pick six to eight people to go,” said Mr. Griffiths. “It is not the same number that can go every year. There are financial constraints.”

The Rotary Club works in tandem with a Rotary Club in New York state. Once the students arrive in the United States they are cared for by the New York group. During the camp, students stayed at a Boy Scout camp. Mount St. Agnes student Kristina Amaro, 16, said she enjoyed working with people from different backgrounds at the camp. “You had to trust other people, and learn how to work with other people,” she said. “We also did things where we would talk about different situations in life and how to handle them.”

Stacia C. Williams, 14, a student at the Bermuda High School for Girls, said the campers spent a lot of time talking about leadership, and about life. They also heard from older people about their experiences.

“We had this one man talking to us about his life,” Stacia said. “His father was a leader, so he knew that was what he wanted to become. In our free time we would talk about our different backgrounds. We mostly told them how Bermuda was and stuff like that.”

Stacia is interested in becoming a lawyer, and is current student society vice president and is in the debate club at school.

For many of the Bermuda students being thrust into a larger group of people from around the world was disorienting. Priscilla Thompson, 16, of CedarBridge Academy said this was all part of the experience.

“There were people from Ghana and other parts of the world that I have never been to before,” Priscilla said. “It helped me to accept people as they are and to build my interpersonal skills. It was a really good camp. It helped me to build how I talk to people. It helped me to have different diverse conversations, not just regular things that we would normally talk about. It helped me to experience people as a whole. It was totally different.” She said the most difficult exercises involved getting to know one another. There were so many different cultures that at first, fitting in was a challenge for some of the students.

“Someone from Africa would be different from someone from Bermuda,” Priscilla said. “So getting to know each other and getting beyond language barriers was a challenge. Some people there didn’t speak very good English.”

Kirsten said she found the cultural aspects of the camp to be exciting and useful.

“I am interested in going into psychology, or events planning,” said Kirsten. “The camp helped me with this because it helped me to understand people more.

“When you are around all different people you know how to communicate with them better. That is definitely important in therapy. You have to be able to understand people, and help them based on what they feel.”

Tansae Wellman, 16, from Saltus Grammar School, said her favourite thing about the camp was getting to know new friends from Bermuda and abroad.

“I was working on my leadership skills,” she said. “We incorporated games with how we would handle our leadership skills as a team. Everyone couldn’t be a leader. In order to make a good team you also had to follow. The following is not necessarily difficult. I think before you become a leader you have to learn how to follow, so it wasn’t hard for me at all.”

She decided to apply for the leadership camp because she wants to do something in the public eye that includes leadership.

“I am interested in political science,” she said. “I want to help Bermuda’s economy to grow.

“With almost everything you do you need leadership skills. This helped me to improve upon the leadership skills that I had. Going to Oakridge Military Academy in the past also helped me with leadership. It was a summer camp.”

She said this was much more relaxed than the military academy, and she got to socialise more.

“With this camp we were able to socialise with boys as well as girls,” she said. “Working as a team with other people helped me to improve upon my leadership skills. I would love to become a counsellor at the camp.”

There were also climate differences to adjust to. Although the temperature was by no means as cold as it could have been in New Jersey in April, for the Bermuda students it was still a bit chilly.

“It was about 53 degrees Fahrenheit,” said Priscilla. “To me it was cold. I was wearing a fur jacket the whole time. The cabins though were very warm inside. At times students had to open up the windows to cool things down. It was like an air conditioner outside.”

Priscilla hoped to eventually study early childhood education and become an elementary school teacher.

“It did help me,” she said. “In order to understand children, you have to understand people. In order to understand people you have to accept people for who they are. This helped to build my leadership and interpersonal skills.”

Not only did the Bermuda students become friends with people around the world, they also bonded with each other. They are all firm friends now. They hope to get together frequently, even though they all attend different schools. “We hope that these students will encourage other students to participate further down the road,” said Mr. Griffiths. “These students, hopefully, will be our leaders of the future.”