Rotary Young Technologist at Belmont Academy
The Rotary Young Technologist (RYT) has been running for a number of years now in the old district 1020 and has been generously sponsored by the Institution of Structural Engineers for pretty much all of that time. The sponsorship money is used to purchase the materials used in the task each year and also trophies for the winning teams in each category namely Basic (S1/S2) Intermediate (S3/S4) and Advanced (S5/6). The Belmont Academy event was the 1st time that RYT has taken place in the West of Scotland, the new combined district 1320, and was instigated by Matthew McColm and the Interact cluster at Belmont academy after attending a challenge enterprise event and learning about it there. After a few emails and a couple of zoom meetings with PDG Jo Pawley, the event was organised by the Interact cluster and Ayr Rotary who rose to the challenge and pulled off a great day of competition with 24 teams from 4 different schools within the area, with Carrick (team B) winning Basic, Kyle academy (team A) winning Intermediate and Kyle academy (team A) winning the Advanced competition. The event was attended by District Governor Narek Bido, Assistant Governor Hazel McCully and also Tom Hey from the Institution of Structural Engineers who also acted as a judge for the Advanced level. The RYT has a series of ‘tasks’ with a different one each year which run on an approximate 10 year cycle and it is hoped that we can run the competition in more schools in the west of district 1320. Hopefully the event at Belmont has sown the seed to get more schools involved in what is probably Rotary’s only ‘mass participation’ competition.
On the same day as Belmont, the competition also took place at Preston Lodge High School in Prestonpans with Kilsyth Academy also running an event at the beginning of the week. There are also two other venues running the competition within the next few weeks so it is estimated that over 400 pupils will have taken part in the event this Rotary year.