Record number of eighth graders participated in NouHätä! – competition in the final phase
This school year, a record number of students participated in the NouHätä! campaign. Approximately 84 percent of Finland’s eighth graders received safety education through the campaign.
The NouHätä! campaign has established itself as one of the largest campaigns aimed at one age group in basic education. This year, the campaign had 49 000 eighth graders participating, which is the highest number in the campaign’s 27-year history. There were 544 schools involved.
The theme of this year’s campaign was preparedness. The coronavirus epidemic and the state of war in Europe have made the theme timely, and a lesson on the topic was added to the campaign’s educational materials.
The safety skills competition included in the campaign has advanced to the final phase. After the qualification and regional competitions, the best team from each rescue department will participate in the final on Thursday, April 27th at the Emergency Services Academy in Kuopio. 22 three-person teams will take the theory test and complete checkpoint tasks at the Emergency Services Academy’s exercise area.
The competition can be followed on social media with the hashtags #nouhätä and #nouhätäfinaali, as well as on NouHätä!’s social media channels on Instagram and Twitter.
Extra lessons
Extra lessons
The contents of the lessons naturally intertwine with the objectives of comprehensive skills and knowledge, especially how to take care of oneself and everyday life skills, but the students also get to practice digital skills and multiliteracy.
The lesson path progresses from basic knowledge and skills to more advanced contents that require contemplation. In addition to first aid and first-aid fire extinguishing skills, the lesson modules provide the students with the tools to practice and assess how to spot environmental safety risks as well as safety risks linked to their own activities.
NouHätä! digital qualification competition 27.2.-17.3.
This season, the NouHätä! competitions will be partly digital and partly live. The qualification phase of the competition will take place from 27 February to 17 March. The qualifying competition will determine the best teams from the rescue departments for the regional competition in April.
The competition is open to eighth graders in teams of three. There is no limit to the number of teams per school. The digital qualifying competition is held on a computer or mobile device. In addition to theory questions, the competition includes picture tasks.
- The qualifying round of the NouHätä! competition will take place on an online platform, which will be open from 27 February to 17 March 2023. The qualifying competition can be completed at any time during the opening hours of the online platform.
- The qualification will be carried out in teams, and each team will have one opportunity to qualify. The competition may NOT be completed as an individual event.
- Team size is three (3) persons.
- The team will complete the qualification under supervision, for example, under the supervision of a teacher.
- Teams do not need to be separately registered for the competition.
- The maximum time limit is 25 minutes.
- The team will come up with a team name, which will be added at the time of logging in.
- The qualifying competition can be done in Finnish, Swedish or English.
- The organizers of the regional competitions will invite the best teams of the qualifying competition to the regional competitions per rescue department. The regional competition will take place on Tuesday 4.4.2023.
The guidelines for the qualifying competition have been sent to the schools that have registered for the campaign. Schools have been provided with a link to the online platform to participate in the competition.
A total of 543 schools are participating in NouHätä! this year. We hope that the number of participants this year will break records. Be part of the race for the NouHätä! championship and win great prizes.
NouHätä! competitions in 2023
In 2023, NouHätä! competitions will be held partly online and partly as live events. The qualifying round will take place online, while regional finals and the grand final will be held traditionally as live events. The competition will be held in teams. Schools that have signed up for the competition will be sent detailed instructions on how to participate.
Based on previous experiences and survey results, the online competition format has been received well. Contestants have also found the online competition easier to take part in. Last year, the online qualifier attracted almost 9,000 participants.
This year, after the online qualifying round, regional finals to determine the best team in each rescue district will be held traditionally as live events. In the grand final, the best teams from each rescue district compete for the NouHätä Finnish championship at the Emergency Services Academy in Kuopio.
All stages of the competition will be held in teams of three. In the qualifying round, the number of teams allowed from each school is not limited. Instructions for the online qualifying round have been sent to participating schools. For more information on how the regional finals will be held, contact your local rescue department. The grand final is hosted by the officer course of Emergency Services Academy Finland.
NouHätä! competitions are organised according to COVID safety guidelines.
NouHätä! 2023 competition schedules
Qualifying round 27 February to 17 March 2023
Regional finals 4 April 2023
Grand Final 27 April 2023
Registration continues until 10.2.
Registration for the NouHätä! campaign continues for a week until 10.2. Registration continues so that every school that wants to participate may do so. Up to this point XXX schools all over Finland have registered.
Schools registered for the campaign will be invited to the digital qualifying competition. The qualifying competition begins 27.2. and ends 17.3.
Information session about the competitions for schools
An information session for schools about the competition will be organized 15.2. at 14.00. The event will briefly review this springs competition. Participants also have a chance to ask question at the event.
You can register for the information session until 15.2. at 12.00. The event will be held only in Finnish.
Preparedness for incidents the theme of this year’s NouHätä campaign
This school year, in addition to preventing accidents and what to do in the event of one, the NouHätä! campaign highlights the importance of being prepared in case of incidents and sheltering indoors. The new teaching materials support this year’s themes. Social media influencers popular among middle schoolers are taking up the challenge of having their electricity cut off for an extended period of time.
Over the past year, issues related to preparedness have been in the news and public discourse more frequently than in decades. With the pandemic and the war in Europe and the resulting possibility of long power outages and other disruptions, people are forced to learn new kind of knowledge and skills. That’s why preparing for incidents has been raised as a theme in the 27th NouHätä! campaign.
Preparedness skills are also important for school-age children who may spend much of the day alone or in the company of others their age. It is important that children to know what to do and not to do if the power or water suddenly goes out, for example. There are separate teaching materials on preparedness issues available on the NouHätä website.
New NouHätä! teaching materials
NouHätä’s teaching materials have been updated and published on the website. The material consists of four lessons. The new content deals with incidents that disrupt normal living and sheltering indoors. The background to the updated material is a recommendation that households should be prepared to survive for 72 hours in the event of an that incident that disrupts the normal functioning of society.
The other lessons deal with fire prevention, what to do in the event of fire, and accidents and injuries.
The NouHätä! campaign meets the requirements of the core curriculum for comprehensive schools. The materials have been prepared as a collaboration by teaching and safety professionals. The materials can be freely used by teachers and instructors and customised according to need.
Check out the new teaching materials!
The campaign’s social media influencers took up the 72hrs Challenge
How will social media influencers popular among school-age children get by without electricity? The theme of the season is strongly in focus on NouHätä’s social media channels on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. The campaign’s message is promoted this year by three social media influencers: Frozen Banana, Khaled Azizi and Veetu. The influencers responded to the campaign’s 72hrs preparedness challenge each in their own way.
Signups for NouHätä are open until 3 February 2023. Sign up your school today!
Customised PP packages
Teaching slides
NouHätä! teaching is divided into four lessons. A lesson plan has been prepared to support each lesson, where you can find instructions for going through the lessons.
The Preventing fires and What to do in case of fire lessons contain instructions and information about different fires, how to act in them, and the best practices for fire prevention.
The Accidents and incidents lesson contains information about the most common accidents that happen to young people, emergency first aid instructions, and other instructions for acting in accidents.
The Incidents and sheltering indoors lesson contain 72 hours concept-based advice on preparing for incidents such as power outage and instructions on how to shelter indoors.
Teachers and trainers
Teaching materials
Teaching materials
Information about teaching materials
Here, you can find NouHätä! campaign’s ready-made teaching slides, lesson plans, videos, and other materials to support your teaching. The lesson contents are designed specifically for secondary school students. You can customize the materials to fit your way of teaching.
Teaching materials
Additional materials to support teaching
NouHätä! 2023 campaign has started
NouHätä! campaign has supported schools in teaching of rescue skills for over a quarter of century. In this time about 850 000 eighth graders have received safety education by the campaign. Registration for this school years NouHätä! campaign has opened and will continue until 3.2.2023.
Preparedness for disruptions such as extended power outages will be brought up even more in this school years campaign. Even now there are versatile teaching materials on the campaign’s webpage. During the autumn the materials will be updated with new lessons that will include the preparedness theme more extensively.
The NouHätä! campaign year will culminate on the spring semester to the national rescue skills competition. This year the preliminary competition will be held online. After that the regional competition will be held in each welfare area in traditional way with theory and action tasks. The best team from each area will go to the final held in Kuopio.
Registration to NouHätä! is busy and already more than 150 schools have participated. Registration is open until 3.2.2023.
NouHätä! competitions in 2022
In 2022, NouHätä! competitions will be held partly online and partly as live events. The qualifying round will take place online, while regional finals and the grand final will be held traditionally as live events. The competition will be held in teams. Schools that have signed up for the competition will be sent detailed instructions on how to participate.
Based on previous experiences and survey results, the online competition format has been received well. The online competition is also easier to take part in. Last year, the online qualifying round attracted more than 6,200 participants, which is twice that of qualifying rounds in previous years.
This year, after the online qualifying round, regional finals to determine the best team in each rescue district will be held traditionally as live events. In the grand final, the best teams from each rescue district compete for the NouHätä Finnish championship at the Emergency Services Academy in Kuopio.
All stages of the competition will be held in teams of three. In the qualifying round, the number of teams allowed from each school is not limited. In later stages, the number of participating teams is limited by municipality or district.
Instructions for the online qualifying round will be sent to participating schools after the end of the sign-up period. For more information on how the regional finals will be held, contact your local rescue department.
NouHätä! competitions are organised according to COVID safety guidelines.
NouHätä! 2022 competition schedules
Qualifying round 28 February to 18 March 2022
Regional finals 7 April 2022
Grand final 28 April 2022
Signups to the competition are open. Sign up your school now!
