Its time for the Youth of the World to register for the UTS Virtual Youth Festival! Registration is open for a short period of time, so don’t delay!

The event, which is under patronage of the IOC, IPC and SOI, has brought together over 80 organisations bringing together the youth of the world.

Register for Virtual Youth Festival

Contact IRF Admin to register or if you have any questions!

To register a participant you will need to have
– Participant’s date of birth
– Participant’s country
– participant’s unique and direct email address
– participant’s photo
– parent consent form

Categories

The Festival is about inclusion and non-discrimination.

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As the southern hemisphere starts to warm up to a covid-19 impacted season, we take a look at winter guide work in a covid climate. With international quarantines and travel restrictions in play, the usual suspects will be off limits for most people. Strict border control means the usual hop skip and a jump across the “ditch” means many Aussie and Kiwi raft guides will find themselves looking closer to home than usual. It also means prospects for guides from north America and Europe in Australia and New Zealand are off the cards – regardless of whether they’ve guided there before.

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In part two, we continue Natalia’s adventures in northern India and discover more about how to take on climate change in Arunachal Pradesh. Read the earlier article here.

Taking on climate change in Arunachal Pradesh

By Natalia Zenkova

… Next morning I crossed a river channel of Brahmaputra river to reach the middle of the river – Majuly Island. For many years it was the biggest river island in the world.

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Last month, the city of Priboj, Serbia, hosted third-year students of the Faculty of Sports and Physical Education, University of Belgrade for a field lesson. Rafting field lessons were realised in the form of a full-day adventure aimed at organising a rafting trip. This excursion is part of the Nature Activities curriculum.

The goals of the project were multiple and included:

• introducing participants to the usual problems of complex organisation of teaching in nature;
• to solve through thorough preparation all accompanying tasks that enable them to implement the designed plan;
• to get acquainted with the ambient and field conditions and natural beauties of the visited place, through the application of selected program content – rafting;
• to get acquainted with rafting as one of the contents from the domain of activities in nature, but also paddling disciplines;
• to get acquainted in practice and adopt the basic procedures of wild water rescue and field movement in a specific environment and
• above all, to get to know the hosts and institutions and to make contacts with them and use them in the future for cooperation in the implementation of actions of general interest for the profession.

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Taking on climate change in Arunachal Pradesh: how one woman’s short trip to India turned into a two month adventure exploring, learning, and supporting local river communities.

Arunachal Pradesh: forgotten land of pure white water

By Natalia Zenkova

In 2014, I read a travelling journal on a plane. I saw beautiful pictures from North Eastern India. I tried to discover the region by internet, but I didn’t find much.

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Annalee Decker shares with us her journey to becoming a rafting Wild Whitewater Woman and the five steps it takes to become one too.

It was a hot summer afternoon that I accomplished my near-obsessive mission of becoming a professional raft guide at the US National White Water Center (USNWC) in Charlotte, NC. My final and most difficult obstacle was the flip drill. For new boaters, a flip drill requires the guide to flip a boat upside down, climb on, flip the boat right side up, and climb on again.

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Dozens of popular paddling destinations along National Wildlife Refuge Water Trails are now even more accessible online having been recently added to the National Rivers Project (NRP), an interactive map and online database which helps to identify, explore and plan river trips. The NRP now includes 18 National Wildlife Refuges and features 103 water trails and 50 access points managed by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).

NRP is a project of the River Management Society (RMS), a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to support professionals who study, protect and manage North America’s rivers.

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London 2012 Olympic canoe slalom gold medalist, Etienne Stott is championing for our climate. No stranger to fame, Etienne has swapped podiums for protests in order to defend our planet. In our exclusive interview, Etienne shares with us the challenges facing paddlesports and how to get involved in championing for the climate.

You’re no stranger to the racing circuit with many medals under your belt culminating in an Olympic gold in 2012.

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With the IRF GTE starting to come to life again after all the various Covid-19 related issues, we ran guide workshops on the Soca, Slovenia. And workshops have been happening in Canada, Chile, Spain, Switzerland, Slovenia, UK and USA during September and October 2020.

Having spent a few months guiding in Iceland I noticed that the European domestic rafting companies were eventually having a busy season. I was hearing from friends based all around Europe who were working as raft guides that they were having record numbers of rafting customers compared to previous seasons.

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Despite restrictions around the pandemic changing all the time, the Rafting Association of Serbia (RAS) managed to hold the EC Ibar Serbia 2020 event – well done to them! The event was held on the 3rd October, one week after their Serbian Cup in Brodarevo on Lim. The venue was the Grmčić course near Ušće on the Ibar, and has put this famous kayak course on the list of places where international rafting competitions are held.

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