Train the Trainer report – Finland – January 2021

Beginning from 2021 there are some changes to Train the Trainer reports. The biggest of them being that the participating countries are from now on asked direct questions in order to make answering the report easier. The answers in this particular report are from member(s) of YOTA team Finland

Main Questions:

How was the last summer in your country when it comes to youth work within ham radio? Did you come up with any new exciting ideas? 

Last summer we had very little activity compared to last year. We activated the Finnish youth on-air with skeds and we had Instagram live sessions. We also did some research and had polls for our members. Instagram lives were something that we tried for the first time and they were nice add to our activity.

How have your activities changed in the past six months? Have you been able to hold e.g. online events or activities within a smaller group of people?

Youth activities in Finland have changed in the past six months. When covid stopped us from planning activities and events we had to rethink our plans. We have now slowly started to organize activities on social media and also on-air. Online activities have been our main focus.

What kind of activities and operating possibilities did you have during the recent December YOTA Month? How did your activities differ from last year, and how did people respond to them?

As usual, in DYM 2020 we offered the OH2YOTA callsign for our society’s youth members. We also planned skeds for youth members to participate on-air. Also we had social media activations. 2020 activities were partly different from what we have done in the past years. Usually we have organized a weekend event during DYM to kickstart the month. So people’s response was a little different.

People were more active towards the possibility to operate the YOTA callsign at their own home’s as well as in flora & fauna area. The weekend event has usually been the way to bring youth together during DYM. Because it was missing, we lacked about 4000 QSOs from usual amount. However, we were happy to hear some new voices behind OH2YOTA this year.

Other Questions:

What kind of problems are you facing with youth work in your member society?

Our current youth members have been quite passive somewhat maybe also due to covid. It’s a challenge to keep our current youth activated and to offer new interesting activities.

We recently had an opinion poll for our society’s member clubs. We asked questions about their youth activities, how many youth members do they have and would they be interested in organizing activities for youth. These were the answers and conclusions we got from the polls:

• • • 80% of the clubs that answered did not have active youth activities
    • Only 48% of the clubs were interested in organizing youth activities
    • 13,5 % were interested in working with the society’s youth team in the future to organize some youth activities together.

Many of the clubs that answered felt that they needed more resources for organizing youth activities and for improving their club activities to support youth and other new members. Lots of clubs needed presentation materials and people that would be interested in leading/organizing youth activities.

Clubs that had youth related activities usually organized training for the amateur radio licence or were doing collaboration with scouts. Some interesting ways few of the clubs were organizing youth activities were electronic building club nights for kids and e-sports activities. Overall, the poll gave us ideas for the future of youth activities as well as co-operation with the clubs.

Anything else that comes to your mind or you want to share?

This year and in 2020 one of our goals has been and will be to improve work with scouts. We see scouts as a big potential for ham radio to find more youth and interested people.

If you have anything to ask about Train the Trainer, please contact trainthetrainer@ham-yota.com