Yesterday, I received kind of an odd e-mail from a group calling itself the World Genesis Foundation. It asked if I would “share the news about a new educational video about Amateur Radio.” Here’s the video:
To be honest, I didn’t watch all 32 minutes, but it seems like a decent video, if a bit “new-age-y,” and it’s aimed at attracting young people into the hobby.
I’m more intrigued by the sponsor of the video, the World Genesis Foundation. It has a very fancy website, but not a lot of substance. It touts some kind of relationship with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), but isn’t specific about that relationship. On their home page, they list three “highlighted projects,” but the link to the very first one is broken.
I guess I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, though. The video, and the accompanying website, RadioQRV.Com, could help attract more young people into amateur radio, and that could be a good thing.
Stan N8BHL says
I got the same pitch. I too was a little leery of the sponsoring organization. I kept waiting for either a religious affiliation or some “save the world” group to show up, but as you pointed out the website was pretty bland. Could be two guys with a 501C3 ticket. Then, it could be that someone is a ham working for the organization and sent the promo out on the company’s ticket. The video was really slick, highly produced. I didn’t make it through the whole thing either, but I saw enough to conclude it was legit. Wish the ARRL could pony up with some better looking stuff like this. There are also three BBC reports on YouTube profiling the story of electricity. Totaling 3 hours, they’re pretty comprehensive.
http://youtu.be/uhgo9fAlAQQ
http://youtu.be/NtNdQ2UOG_0
http://youtu.be/MT8yeMzHvKY
Walter Underwood says
This seemed similar to a recent QST article, and it checked out.
In the Nov 2013 QST, p78, there is an article about a summer camp in Romania with amateur radio and green power. That was partially funded by this group. The article is by YO8TLC.
A press release before the camp is here: http://worldgenesis.org/press-2011-06-01.html