Youth Committee (C8) * | International Amateur Radio Union (IARU)

The Region 1 Youth Committee * is responsible for promoting Amateur Radio Youth Activities in Region 1 through the coordination and engagement with IARU Region 1 member Societies. The main program of the Youth Committee * is known as Youngsters On The Air (YOTA).

* NOTE: Interim decision to change from Youth Working Group to Youth Committee taken by the Executive Committee. To be ratified by the next General Conference.

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These are the main activities in the YOTA program:

- YOTA Summer Camp: about 80 participants, from 30 member societies, take part the in annual summer camp. The event has been organized since 2011 and is every year hosted by a different member societies of IARU R1.
Participants will have a week in involved in many ham radio related topics, they will learn new parts of the radio hobby and will learn from each other. There is also a cultural aspect, youngsters will learn about the host country and about other participating countries. In addition, they will work on their presentation and language (mostly English) skills.
Main topic of the event is Train the Trainer. Activities will focus on creating young ambassadors for amateur radio. Participants will get the skills, take part in discussions, with the aim to start organising similar activities when they return back home.

- YOTA Subregional Camps: a minimum of 25 participants spend several days (minimum 3 days and maximum 8 days) involved in many ham radio related topics. In this period they will learn new parts of the radio hobby and will learn from each other. Aim of the event is to attract newcomers to the hobby as well.

- Youth Contest Program (YCP): young HAM’s will have the opportunity to take part in a contest from a ‘Top-gun’ station. They will learn how to operate the contest station, improve their contest skills and will aim for the best results together as a team. A youngster will probably be coming for the first time to the host country and will get the chance to experience this country and share amateur radio knowledge with local youngsters.

- December YOTA Month (DYM): the entire month of December several youngsters will become active with YOTA as suffix in the callsign. The idea for this is to show the amateur radio hobby to youth and to encourage youngsters to be active on the ham radio waves. In the last year more then 40 stations took part and more then 80.000 QSO’s have been made per year. A special award is available.

- Train the Trainer (TTT): TTT is a platform where young amateur radio enthusiast and youth coordinators can exchange their ideas and experiences on how to get more young people involved in the hobby.

Here an overview of youth coordinators.

The Terms of Reference for the Youth WG group can be found here.