Although the amount of youngster in DL is high, the general situation still has to be improved. Around 1000 youngsters (aged 14 to 26) are members of the DARC, whereof nearly 500 are even licenced. This shows that the best way for improving the situation is to work with the existing youngsters.
Therefore our first steps will be to find out more about our already existing young members. While working with them together, we first want to get an overview of why they are doing ham radio, which issues are the most fascinating for them, what do they like and what do they think about ham radio in general. But besides those who can give more detailed answers in these questions, our aim is also to involve those who aren’t active (anymore). Some already have been active but somehow lost their interest. Finding out the reason for this can help us not just to reactive them, but also to avoid that new youngsters will loose their interest.
Another point where we especially in Germany need to focus on are those who are members through a family membership. Since they know a little bit of radios and since they do often have an active family member, they already have someone close who can help them in the beginning. They just need to experience that it’s not just a hobby of their parents, it also is a hobby which is interesting for youngsters and that they there is youth in ham radio!
This is why we want to bring youngsters together and create a youth network where they can share experiences and ideas, but mainly also to get to know each other. There already are smaller groups, but we would like to reach also cross-regional contacts between all those youngsters, especially those who don’t have a youth group in their club. To achieve all of this, we’re currently planning a youth camp, where we invite all youngsters to take part and get to know each other so that youngsters will stay in touch with one another.
Some youngsters, who didn’t know each other before, spend a weekend together at the DX-Hotel at DM9EE through the YouthContestProgram. During the whole weekend and besides the contest there was still enough time left to get to know one another. Through this weekend we realized that even such a smaller event has already been enough to get youngsters connected, since the most important ice-breaker seems to be to meet each other. All participants also highly welcomed the idea of a german youth camp.
We’re happy to finally announce the first german youth camp, which will also be a subregional YOTA-camp! It will take place in Baunatal from 15th to 17th March 2019. To achieve enough attendence of german youngsters, the main language during the camp will be German. All activities are also held in english (at least with an interpreter) so that both, our international guest can take part without any disadvantage and german youngsters who aren’t speaking much english can improve their skills.
The idea behind our camp program is to bring youngsters with same interests together since this constitues the basis of further exchange beyond the camp. The programm also includes the idea of “youngsters for youngsters” and “choose your interest” because we want to avoid to bore youngsters with long presentations of topics where they might not be interested, but also to give enthusiastic young hams the change to share their ideas with other interested ones.
Register for the (nonbinding!) newsletter: https://ajw.darc.de/subregional2019/index.php
For questions so far, please don’t hesitate to write to ham-yota@darc.de!
Now, during the December Yota Month, the German station DF0YOTA is QRV at various stations with a lot of Youngsters! To coordinate the time slots for the callsign, we created an online calendar, where everyone can see which time slots (for the whole december) are still available and which are already taken. All interested youngster can easily book an available time slot by sending an online reservation inquiry which is then approved by the callsign coordinator.
For all taken slots you can see by whom this time slot is taken. This entails that youngsters can arrange shifting if it is necessary. Especially for those who just have limited or rarely access to a station this can be pretty helpful.
