January 2025 – Strategic priorities update

| December 12, 2024

Strategy update: the RSGB Outreach Team

 

The RSGB Outreach Team is a band of enthusiastic radio amateurs from the four countries of the United Kingdom. We want to provide radio amateurs with the resources to show that amateur radio has much to offer and is an exciting modern hobby. We hope that people will take our resources into the community, to their own club, and out to younger audiences such as universities, schools, scout, cadet and guide groups.

Strategy and goals

At the RSGB’s growth workshop in February this year, the nucleus of the Outreach Team was formed and the members set some immediate and longer-term goals. Over the months some of these goals have changed but many have been achieved. Firstly, we decided to focus on a single audience rather than spreading ourselves too thinly, so reaching youngsters has been our aim this year. The RSGB’s appointment of Coordinators for British Science Week (BSW) and National Coding Week (NCW), as well as two Youth Champions focusing on schools and universities, has expanded our team, our enthusiasm and our ideas!

We also said that we would do a small number of things well, which we hoped would act as a catalyst for other activities and events. This year we’ve focused on expanding the RSGB’s involvement not just in BSW and NCW but also in JOTA and YOTA Month. We’ve seen an increase both in the number of groups and individuals getting involved, and also with the interactions on the RSGB’s social media channels about these events.

Finally, we promised that we would report regularly on our activities, and we’ve been doing that across all the RSGB’s external comms channels as well as some of its internal ones. If you’ve missed any, search the RSGB website for mentions of any of the above events! Here are some of the activities you could get involved in…

ISS contacts

Amateur radio enables you to have great experiences including contacting the International Space Station (ISS). The recent Girlguiding ISS contact at Brooklands Museum, which was organised by the RSGB and ARISS, inspired both the 100 members of Girlguiding at the event and many who watched the livestream, to discover what is possible with amateur radio and STEM.

There is an opportunity for more schools in the UK to do the same, so we have been helping schools to navigate the application process to host an amateur radio contact with the ISS. Our aim has been to have ISS contacts with schools in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England. We will find out next year if the applications have been successful, but schools can still apply for future slots – go to ariss.org/ariss-application.html

Practical skills

After the ISS contact the girls built Snail Morse keys and had fun sending messages and playing Morse Battleships – always a popular activity. Build-a-radio events for young people are organised each year at Bletchley Park Museum by the RSGB and funded by the Radio Communications Foundation, and they are always over-subscribed. We would love to see such initiatives taking place in all parts of the UK. Could your club or group host a buildathon or a practical workshop? The RSGB has created a new web section to give you inspiration and support so head over to rsgb.org/practical-events 

Resources

For both BSW and NCW this year, we created new resources to add to those from previous years. These ideas can be used at any time of the year. For example, the theme for BSW this year was ‘Time’ and the ‘Radio Signals and Space Probes’ activity could be run when a school has a Space Week. You can find this and other activities at rsgb.org/bsw

For NCW we created an activity using the Raspberry Pi Pico and another with a LoRa tracker board. Previous activities include the Arduino and the BBC Micro:bit, and every primary school has a set of Micro:bits! Find these at rsgb.org/coding

John Hislop, G7OHO gave a presentation at the RSGB Convention about the outreach opportunities of the Pico whilst the two Youth Champions spoke about the best way to reach young people with amateur radio. You can see both on the RSGB YouTube channel in the “RSGB 2024 Convention” playlist.

Get involved

Youngsters on the Air (YOTA) Month is another excellent source of outreach. By the time you read this it will be well underway for this year, but there will still be opportunities either to host the GB24YOTA call sign or to listen out for it and encourage the youngsters on the air. It is worth the effort of setting up a radio station to see a shy youngster chat happily with someone on the other side of the world. Children learn that we all have different time zones. One lad was speaking to a radio amateur in Australia and when he was told the time there (which was the next day) he said, “You are living in the future!”

Jamboree on the Air (JOTA) and Thinking Day on the Air (TDOTA) are also ideal opportunities for introducing young people to amateur radio. The next TDOTA is in February 2025 – could you link with your local Girlguiding group to get them on the air?

Share your ideas

We are looking at other exciting initiatives for 2025 such as a high-altitude balloon experiment. Do you have any suggestions for outreach to young people that the team could consider?

RSGB Outreach Team
strategy@rsgb.org.uk

 

Category: RSGB Notices, RSGB Strategic Priorities