How Do We Get The Younger Generation Involved?

How do we get the younger generation involved in this? I know out of everyone here there must be some good ideas.

Share the hobby with your children, starting around age 9.

Find creative ways to make it cool, using technology to keep their interest.

Feed them, keep them alive, and check back in 40 years, if you are still alive.
If not, make sure your philatelic estate is well organized, so they can easily pick it up.

Promise them free stuff.

I am a member of 2 local stamp clubs and so is my 11 year old Daughter.
She has always been interested in getting involved in what I was doing with my stamps at home so I asked her if she wanted to come along.

Now she is quite disappointed if she cannot go to a meeting and always attends stamp days with me.

Her interest is cats on stamps and it was pleasing when she received a catalogue for Christmas, watching her sort her collection.

She is very Apt at using and recording purchases from circuit books and her accuracy usually runs rings around seasoned collectors.

She budgets portions of her pocket money to spend at upcoming events.

I have often wondered how long this enthusiasm will last and my partner asked the other night "is she really interested in stamps or is it the attention the oldies give her"

Hard to answer that and time will tell but, I know I have given her a good start and will continue to give her plenty of encouragement on the way.

Good ideas

The concept of a quest comes to mind and although free stuff is cool, build it in to the quest as some sort of reward.

Encouragement to research history/geography/science/famous people/etc etc.

encourage the use of stamps as teaching aids in the lower grades for history etc. encourage stamps club members to visit local school classrooms, or vice versa to come to local meetings and show inexpensive topical items. check with existing successful programs and emulate them. of course there will be an incubation period but in the long run any effort is better than none.

Sorry M&M ,doesn't work like that , no school wants a strange old man around the young kids . This is a different world . The State sets a standard for education, there isn't time in a school day for outsiders to come in and experiment on the kids .

Celebrity endorsements will work. Get the Bieber in on stamp circuits. Have folks in people, spin, and other mags flaunt collecting. People like to see the human side of celebs, and if they are doing interesting things, other people will follow.

I see this kind of thread often, working on the premise that its a good thing to get youth involved, or bemoaning why "kids" aren't into stamp collecting these days.

But why does it matter if younger people are involved or not? Many hobbies/pursuits are not typically practiced by youth, but by people as they are older.

The seeds are planted early. How many older folks first tasted stamp collecting in their youth? Check out the polls that have been taken on this forum.

Imho introduce them early age 7-12 (9-10 may be ideal, it depends based on the maturity of the kid) and get them involved in what you do. My kids loves sorting stamps by country when we buy a lot. They can keep inventory, start a mini project for them. Eg. ours is collecting the world, so she will pick out her favorite stamp from each country until we check mark all countries (which we know is a long journey).

gmot makes a good point. Targeting retiring baby boomers; who may have collected as kids; is possibly a more fruitful way to get more collectors.

Several years ago, two teachers dropped into our annual bourse and sought info on how stamps and stamp collecting could be explained to their students. This led to three club members making up a short presentation. Great strides have been made in this initiative and you can read the whole story of the Bramalea Stamp Club's endeavours at https://bramaleastampclub.org/

Click on "Youth Outreach" for the presentation and then on "More, School Connections" for a description of the initiative's success and how the students were involved with the World Stamp Show in New York City.

We, as a club, are truly proud of our results and of the members who have participated. Currently, we are assisting the teachers to determine the possibility of beginning stamp clubs in the schools. The process takes time, but the results are certainly worth it.

Don

Flooftrader-That is not always true about schools. I volunteer with a kids group that meets at the Collector's Club in NYC once a month for about the last 10 years. The woman who runs it has been doing this far longer when she lived out of the city. We get 14-16 kids each month, and we have been invited to schools and Cub Scout meetings occasionally.

EasyOne - that is a nice presentation. Congrats to you and the other club members for putting in the time and effort to do this outreach.

All- I got back into philately after 20 yrs to get my 7 yr old involved. I bought her a packet of world stamps and bought her this beginners album
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/.../048644113X/

This album got index of all countries and helps identify them as well.Its got pics of each country too.
Everytime she puts a stamp in, she looks up the country in the globe.
This is a valuable geography lesson and she is so far hooked to it. She is excited to go to her first stamp club meeting today. I am not sure how long this interest will last ( so far only one month) but its a good start..