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Daniella Schroder is the delightfully engaging Head Girl for Bethlehem College in 2012. Her performing arts talent and consistently remarkable results in this arena have opened up many opportunities for Daniella – most recently to take part in the national International Youth Lions Camp. We caught up with her to find out about her experience.
Daniella explains that there is strong sense of purpose behind the camp, which brings around 40 young people together from all over the world. “The purpose of Lions International to bridge the gap between various cultures and nationalities and bring the world together as one pretty much – it’s all about unity.” There were in fact 7 countries represented at the camp including Australia, Italy, Malaysia, Austria, Brazil, Mexico and of course New Zealand.
Held during the school holidays, the camp happily offered plenty of opportunities for adventure. While the camp was based at the Lake Okataina Recreation Centre in Rotorua, the young people packed in an impressive amount of off site activities. “Everyday we road tripped to various places around the North Island – being tourists! We did all of the fun tourist activities – we went luging, we did the Zorb, we went jet boating, we had a marae stay, we went rock climbing, we did the swoop – so it was a pretty awesome experience,” smiles Daniella.
Daniella admits she was apprehensive at first at the thought of spending ten days with 40 complete strangers, but those fears were quickly allayed. “When I first arrived at the camp I was quite freaked out because I knew absolutely no-one and I thought this is going to be ten days of absolute misery – but one thing I really learned was how quickly you can become a tight knit unit…and how strangers are just friends in the waiting. I have formed friends for life – people that have made a profound impact on my life and I hope that I’ve made an impact on them.”
This enriching and expansive experience is one that will stay with Daniella for a long time to come. She comments that, “Interacting with various nationalities was really quite a life changing experience for me. It’s not everyday you get to hang out with people from all over the world, and they all have their own story to tell, and their own customs and traditions they share with you so you just come to have this mutual respect for one another. If there was one thing I really took away from meeting them was just realizing how important every person is, and how special everyone is, and how much you can give and how much can get from people.”
See the Bethlehem Foundation Facebook Page for more photos.
Watch out interview with Daniella on YouTube.
