How to start a Young GI Section in your country: A cookbook

摘要

No organisation has a future without active involvement of young people who will devote time and engage themselves in the future development of the organisation. This holds especially true for medical societies, which have been driven in the past largely by volunteers close to retirement. Although experience is an important factor to defend this policy, a mixture of younger and older representation seems to be healthier and may better reflect the diversity and varying interests within a society. Thus, we see more and more organisations involving young people and preparing them for leadership at an age of below 40 years or even younger. Since 2014, UEG has a Young Talent Group (YTG), and now all UEG committees as well as the UEG council have a YTG representative. YTG representatives actively participate in discussions and meetings and help to prepare strategic plans, scientific and educational activities and to develop strategies for the future success of our society. In 2017, YTG published a cookbook on how to start a Young GI Section (YGIS) in order to help young GI to develop activities on a national level. Since then, great progress has been made in starting national YGIS in several countries, and activities of the young GI groups and the YTG have become more and more visible at a European and national level. However, sometimes these activities make only slow progress due to various local factors, for example interest and time of young GIs, fear of senior people to start activities that may get out of control, time constraints, competing societies and interest groups, low number of available or interested people, long distances to arrange meetings or costs that may occur for meetings, technological support and so on. This article highlights some events that have happened since the first presentation of the YTG cookbook and provides some inspiring ideas, but it also addresses potential obstacles and how they may be solved. This article will hopefully inspire the formation of additional YGIS and support existing YGIS to continue or improve their important activities in the future.