We mentioned that Train the trainer workshop was a new thing at this year’s YOTA. Here in Finland the national youth board of SRAL, Nuorisotiimi, has been having an ongoing work for long time to understand and solve the issues with activating and engaging young people to amateur radio. Substantial things achieved so far are organizing the national amateur radio youth camp Polar in September and taking part in the international December YOTA Month DYM event at a weekend overnight event.
Nordics On The Air (NOTA), an event first envisioned years ago, became reality in spring 2017 when the first NOTA was held in Sweden. NOTA brought people from the Nordics together at YOTA too. An actual plan was devised when representatives from the Finnish and Swedish youth boards sat down to share ideas and plan mutual youth activities. Additionally an objective was set to try to get young people from other Nordic countries involved in NOTA. It was agreed on that a mutual gathering of Nordic youth boards or representatives will be held in Finland in the upcoming autumn with the focus of the meeting on establishing connections and making further plans.
We want to place an emphasis also on international activity as it has been identified as a thing that inspires young people. By planning things in contact with other countries, we want to learn and coordinate youth activities together. Anyway, as far as we know, only Finnish and Swedish national amateur radio leagues have functional youth boards. But we would like it to change and are working on it. While the change happens we want to welcome all Nordic youngsters to our youth activities!
