International Young Naturefriends

What is IYNF?

IYNF is an international organisation associating Young Naturefriends and their organisations accross Europe established in 1975. With its 19 member organisations that gather more than 120.000 young members organised in more than 1000 local groups, it is one of the major European youth organisations.

IYNF Work

IYNF combines three roles and identities:

1. IYNF is a network of groups and organisations that cooperate together. The role of IYNF core is to facilitate the cooperation by creating links, organising meeting, providing direct support and promoting it widely.
2. IYNF is a training and exchange organisation organising value-driven youth exchanges and capacity building activities for the benefit of its members. We do so in our core fields of outdoor programming, amateur art and environmental education. Our method is experiential and intercultural education.
3. IYNF is a value-based organisation representing its members at the European level. By our delegations, publications and promotion activities we stand for the core values of IYNF that are respect, equality, solidarity, sustainability and love and care for nature.

Practically, this means following products and services:

• capacity building activities for various youth work competencies
• international youth exchanges for community building
• content and methodical publications
• continuous information flow with targeted media channels
• representation and promotion at the European level
• finding partners for networking projects
• mentoring and support for networking project
• software for contact, knowledge and project management
• space for development of common projects

IYNF mission is toconnect and inspire Young Naturefriends for living values of respect, solidarity, equality, sustainability, and love and care for nature.

For whom we work

Youth leadersare the primary target group of most IYNF activities. In various capacities - as representatives of their organisation, group or on their own behalf, we design our meetings and activities mainly to fit to the needs and interest of the youth leaders and youth workers. As a membership-based organisation, we primarily target to the youth workers and youth leaders involved in our member organisations or the Naturefriends movement at large.

Local groupsare target of ournetworking programmesthrough which we provide to them opportunities to set up a project (mainly a youth exchange) and succesfully organise and folow it up.

IYNFmember organisationsare usually large federations themselves, consisting of many regional and local groups. Our programme to member organisations involves mainly the external representation, exchange of information and common work towards the youth leaders and local groups.

Young Europeansare certainly a wide and blurry target group and we don't really aim to adress them all. However those, that feel inspired by IYNF values and our working style are invited and welcome to our activities and trainings.