Jaanika Palm, head of Ilmatsalu Youth Center, looks back at the first year of operation of Ilmatsalu Youth Center as part of the Tartu Youth Work Center.
Ilmatsalu Youth Center has a tradition of organizing various nature study days and field trips. Young people were able to experience extreme situations during survival training days (October) and campfire cooking days (August). Since it is also important to appreciate the nature of our homeland, our first nature camp/learning days took place in the vicinity of Tartu and on the Ilmatsalu bird trail. We have visited the Ilmatsalu bird trail more than fifteen times during the year as part of various activities and events. In addition to various nature and survival-themed study days and field trips, we learned orienteering, cooking in a kettle, knot tying, and making various items from recycled materials (e.g., lanterns, nails), planted edible plants (e.g., tomatoes, peppers, dill, lettuce, etc.) in the youth center, learned how to make a fire with fire sticks, wove survival bracelets, and talked about the weather, animals, birds, and plants in Estonia and further afield. The larger study days were made possible thanks to the ANK project "Promoting Nature Education." The young people contributed their ideas, advice, and energy to the study days.
The Ilmatsalu Family Day, held on September 7, 2019, by the Ilmatsalu Youth Center and Ilmatsalu Hobby Center, turned out to be a wonderful community day. Young people prepared snacks and sweets for the Youth Cafe for the family day, helped create family day signs, directional pointers, and various decorations. During feedback, we received many ideas from the young people for the next community family day.
Our youth center's activities have reached across the ocean. During the October school holiday, youth workers from Brazil and Peru (within the framework of the Erasmus+ TED3 project) visited the Tartu Youth Work Center and the Ilmatsalu Youth Center for job shadowing. Together with them, we visited the Tartu Nature House and the University of Tartu Botanical Garden. The job shadows also participated in our survival training days, where they completed the entire program with us in wind and rain. Even now, they recall both the training day and our capable young people with positive emotions.
Every school holiday, we offered young people a three-day holiday program, one day of which was always dedicated to the youth center's traditional mini-pentathlon. The activities were suitable for everyone's abilities and achievable/completable. For example, maze navigation, relay race, solving secret codes, weightlifting, jump rope, memory training, etc. The top three received prizes, and all participants always got a small souvenir. We will continue the same tradition in 2020.
To ensure that the year 2020 at Ilmatsalu Youth Centre is just as exciting and active, we periodically organize meetings with young people and gather ideas about what activities they wish to continue doing. Currently, it can be said that overnight events, excursions, adventure parks, and similar activities are popular.
