APYN with the help of the Institute of Alcohol Studies established a group of APYN Youth researchers who designed and implemented this project, using the network of youth member organisations to recruit participants.

Youth researchers primarily aimed to document youth perceptions of alcohol marketing in Europe. The secondary aim was to document and describe the volume and types of alcohol marketing that young people in Europe are exposed to in their daily lives. The research project consisted of two parts: an online survey and a mapping exercise.

1095 respondents from 41 countries (age ranging from 14 to more than 40) participated in an online survey about their perceptions of alcohol marketing and 23 participants from 11 countries participated in a pilot mapping exercise that documented the prevalence of alcohol marketing practices in their daily lives.

Respondents who had their first drink under the age of 15 years were far more likely to report heavy episodic drinking levels throughout their lifetime. The survey results showed that respondents have felt perceived more by other things (like taste, price and special offers) than advertisements when buying alcohol. However, the majority of respondents agreed that alcohol advertising influences youth perceptions of alcohol and should not be targeted at young people (74.5 % of respondents), and that alcohol advertisements should carry health warnings (77.4 % of respondents). Respondents agreed, that price and availability are very important when deciding whether and what kind of drinks to consume (eg, more than 65 % of respondents feel influenced to buy the drink then there is a special offer for it and more than 85% of respondents claimed they do take price into consideration when choosing alcoholic drink). This suggested, that one cannot objectively assess how much is he or she influenced by marketing in general. We all know that the influence of marketing is supposed to be unobvious.

The mapping exercise results showed that participants documented exposure to alcohol advertisements in a wide variety of settings, most often in supermarkets, streets and on the internet. The marketing medium used most often was poster. In general, participants spotted on average more than ten examples of alcohol marketing during the course of two days.

Youth researchers conclude that more studies should be done in order to objectify the actual impact of alcohol marketing throughout Europe and that they are going to try to attract more young people to the APYN Youth Researchers’ team. The conclusions made from this research study include a recommendation to governments and policymakers in Europe to introduce stricter regulation of alcohol marketing, in order to protect young people.

The entire report can be found on www.apyn.org/resources

If you are interested in becoming more engaged in day to day action on the alcohol projects’, policy or youth research field, and your organization is or is applying to become a full member of APYN, then apply now to become a member of an APYN body.

More about the call can be found here: Call for members of APYN official bodies

Deadline is 7th February 2012 by midnight (:

In this newsletter read more about:

- The European Alcohol and Health forum

- The WHO consultation with NGOs and health professionals about the future Global Alcohol Strategy

- The results of the APYN Consultation with members and the APYN 2011 Consultation Working Group

- The summary of the APYN study on the impact of marketing to young people consumption levels

Read more in the 2nd APYN Newsletter

Enroll for the Official APYN Membership Call and join other 27  youth organization working on this field already today (:

Call for APYN members

Scheme of APYN bodies

APYN Constitution 2012

Exceptions to the 1st APYN GA

If a representative of your organization would like to be included in the APYN 2011/12 Consultation working group, please send us the signed and stamped form that you can find below, with the contact details of the person responsible for your organization for the time until the first General Assembly (GA) that will happen sometime between December 2011 and February 2012 (max 10 hours/ month with a possibility of an additional working weekend meeting).

The deadline to send back the fulfilled form (statement of interest) is 15^th September 2011, while the consultation process will start at the beginning on October 2011.

Letter consultation_apyn_1.8.11

Statement of interest

The report is a product of the “APYN project” financed by the European Union in the framework of the Health Programme, AHF/ Institute of Alcohol Studies and IOGT-NTO.

The report shows opinions of APYN member organizations and their representatives at events taking place in 2010 and 2011. In none of the cases this report is not representing APYN’s position on the topic but just sums-up the expressed views of the participants from different events. The report can be accessed on this link.

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The report shows opinions of APYN member organizations and their representatives at events taking place in 2010 and 2011. In none of the cases this report is not representing APYN’s position on the topic but just sums-up the expressed views of the participants from different events. The report can be accessed on this link.

Read more about the plan for 2012 – 2014 on Activities 2012-2014

• to broaden the understanding of the role of “training” and “trainers” in bringing alcohol policy and alcohol harm reduction to the agenda of the youth organizations and
• to enable participants to be able to prepare, run and evaluate non-formal education training activities aiming at developing participants capacities to plan, implement and evaluate local youth project connected to alcohol policy and alcohol harm reduction.

The objectives of this training for trainers were:

• To capacitate representatives of Youth NGOs to be active players in the definition, implementation and evaluation of educational and training programmes on alcohol policies and alcohol harm reduction at the local, national, European and international levels.
• To allow participants to have a general overview of Alcohol Policy, empowering them to take action when going back to their organisation.
• To provide the space for the development of essential skills for the trainer in non-formal education with youth groups (e.g. team work, programme design, feedback, peer education).
• To empower and capacitate the participants to competently prepare, run and evaluate  training courses on alcohol harm reduction for their own organisations.
• To reflect and share strategies on how to motivate organisations and younsters to engage in such activities.
• To create the space for participants to exchange approaches, methodologies and tools to develop training activities in alcohol policy and alcohol harm reduction within their organisations.
• To develop a Toolkit for trainers in Alcohol Policy.
• To share approaches and define an action plan to establish the APYN Pool of trainers in Alcohol Policy.
• To foster cooperation and networking among the organisations present.

The event hosted 13 participants from 10 different countries.

The project was financed by the Executive Agency for Health and Consumers with the help of the Institute of Alcohol Studies and IOGT NTO.