In three weeks time, IPY will have officially started!

Every few weeks, I write to my various colleagues and contacts around the world letting them know about the latest plans for IPY Education and Outreach. Lately, this has clearly been dominated by plans for the launch on March 1st, but I'm pretty excited about the following months as well. We'll soon hopefully have packs for Press, materials for teachers, navigation of IPY via geobrowsers like Google Earth and live connection to the polar regions through various IPY partners. if you would like to know more about these activities, keep a track of this website or {encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title="let me know"} if you'd like to be added to the Teachers or Journalists email lists.

Thanks to all of you who provided translations for the educational launch activity : it's now available in English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, and Japanese.. and I believe Portugese and Inuktitut are on their way. Hopefully there will be students around the world in schools, science centres, and their homes, launching virtual balloons. Please spread the word!

The national and international launch events are also about to hit the Press. We have launch events listed for Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark/Faroe Islands/Greenland/Iceland, Finland, France, Europe, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, the Netherlands, UK, and US. New Zealand celebrated a very successful event in Antarctica already and the Indigenous People's Opening Ceremony is occurring at the moment. This is also being webcast, courtesy of the Arctic Portal, who will be responsible for webcasting many of the other launch events, including the Opening Ceremony in Paris.

The IPY Youth Steering Committee are also getting involved with the launch by asking young people from around the world to write to their political leaders about their concerns for the Polar Regions and what they personally are doing to make a difference. Please send any youth representatives in your area to www.ipyyouth.org.

An excellent document outlining the Scope of Science during IPY is also now available for download from this site... a great overview to the question 'what is IPY?'


Finally, we are still missing several summaries for the IPY projects. To see how your country fares, go to www.ipy.org, select Projects at the top, and then select your country. If you are an IPY participant and would like help writing these summaries, or a writer who would like to help writing these summaries, please let me know.

Please note, the next Newsletter will be available after the launch.

Best wishes to you all,

Rhian