Children are becoming less active. Statistics measuring well-being in children and young people indicate that mental health issues and loneliness are on the rise. Across the Nordic countries, efforts are being made to find solutions to these problems.
Countries are focusing specifically on leisure time and activities that help prevent social exclusion and foster a sense of belonging in children and young people. One solution is the leisure card, which allows families to cover part of their child’s leisure activity fees.
Denmark launched its leisure card as early as 2006, and now a similar solution is being tested in Turku, a western Finnish municipality with approximately 200,000 inhabitants, and also across Sweden.
While the concepts and implementations of leisure cards vary, they all share the core idea that the state or municipality contributes to the cost of children’s recreational activities. The rising costs of hobbies are increasingly preventing children from participating in meaningful leisure activities.
In Turku, the so-called Boostii benefit is given to every child and adolescent aged 7–19, with the amount varying by age from €160 to €260 per year. This voucher-like benefit can be used to cover fees for guided sports activities organised by local clubs or associations in Turku.
“Our goal has been to address three key areas,” says Markus Kalmari, Director of Sports Services in Turku. “Firstly, we want to make hobbies more affordable. Secondly, we aim to ensure that in the future, every residential area in Turku offers children and young people access to sports activities close to home. And thirdly, we strive to strengthen the skills of sports club coaches.”
Beyond simply providing the voucher, Turku is working to develop its sports facilities network. When schools undergo renovations, their sports facilities are also designed for leisure use.
Meanwhile, an online course on responsible coaching developed by the Finnish Olympic Committee is used to enhance the expertise of sports club coaches. Completing this course is a requirement for sports clubs to join the network of approved leisure card providers.
“Coaches in sports clubs play a vital role in shaping a child’s relationship with physical activity. A sense of achievement and motivation to engage in a sport or hobby is fostered through a coach’s guidance,” Kalmari explains.
In addition to the Boostii benefit, children and adolescents in Turku can take part in activities provided through the Finnish model for leisure activities. This so-called ‘Finnish model’, overseen by the Ministry of Education and Culture, is a nationwide initiative ensuring that every child has the opportunity to participate in a free hobby group of their choice during the school day. The model has a national annual budget of €14 million, and in addition, the partaking municipalities fund the initiative as well.
However, Boostii and the Finnish model are fundamentally different in their implementation.
“Through the Finnish model, children can access a low-threshold hobby once a week, but it often excludes more goal-oriented participation. The leisure card, on the other hand, focuses on activities organised by sports clubs, giving children and young people the chance to develop long-term motivation for a sport,” Kalmari summarises.
He believes it is beneficial to have different options available, and a hobby started through the Finnish model could also encourage participation in a sports club. “In a sports club, children can participate with different levels of ambition, and also more casually,” Kalmari adds.
Turku has allocated €2.7 million this year for the leisure card. The budget does not cover the development of the digital system required for the Boostii benefit. That has been funded separately. However, it includes cooperation with the SOS Children’s Villages, which provides an additional €50,000 in hobby grants for disadvantaged children on top of the Boostii benefit. The annual budget for the Finnish model hobby groups in Turku is €300,000.”
Roskilde focuses on child engagement
In Denmark, the leisure card, known as fritidspas, is directed towards hobbyists through municipalities and is available in approximately 80 percent of them.
“It’s very difficult to compare the Danish leisure card with solutions in other countries because even within Denmark, implementations vary significantly,” says Michael Lind Olsen, an expert in culture, libraries and sports in the municipality of Roskilde.
In recent years, the municipality of Roskilde has focused on understanding how children can be encouraged to participate in and commit to recreational activities. Experience has shown that merely providing subsidised access does not necessarily create motivation.
Therefore, in addition to the leisure card, this municipality with approximately 50,000 inhabitants, is building partnerships with sports clubs under Lind Olsen’s leadership.
Through these partnerships, sports clubs get access to a part-time employee whose main task is to support children and adolescents who would otherwise be unable to participate due to their family’s circumstances or finances. This employee acts as a link between children and coaches, ensuring that young people from vulnerable families are actually included in the group.
In addition to this personnel resource, clubs are given guidance on how to welcome new children and how existing members and their families can help newcomers feel comfortable.
“We’ve learned that a good start plays a crucial role in children’s commitment. A welcome can look very different across clubs – some have 800 members while others have only 70 – but we encourage all clubs to create their own version,” Lind Olsen says.
Now, this project led by Lind Olsen has become an integral part of the municipal activities in Roskilde. The creation of these partnerships, as well as the leisure card itself, is funded by the municipality. The leisure card has an annual budget of approximately 250,000 Danish kroner (€33,000), while one million Danish kroner (€135,000) is allocated annually to partnerships.
The Swedish fritidskort strives to understand and prevent segregation among children and youth
In autumn 2025, Sweden will launch the fritidskort, a leisure card developed with the aim of improving participation and well-being in children and adolescents.
“Sweden is experiencing a strong trend of segregation. Children and adolescents do not participate equally in recreational activities, and the COVID-19 pandemic only worsened the situation,” says Madeleine Larsson, an analyst and project manager at the Swedish Public Health Agency (Folkhälsomyndigheten).
The agency is part of a team consisting of five national organisations responsible for coordinating the launch and implementation of the new leisure card. Folkhälsomyndigheten is in charge of communicating about the leisure card and evaluating its impact.
Unlike in Turku and Roskilde, where municipalities administer the leisure card, the Swedish fritidskort is managed at the government level. An annual budget of 800 million Swedish kronor (approximately €70,000) has been allocated for its implementation.
According to Larsson, it’s crucial to evaluate the impact of leisure activities and, in particular, give more attention to non-sports-related hobbies that don’t receive the same financial subsidies as sports clubs. “We don’t really know how hobby groups influence children’s and young people’s well-being or social inclusion, nor how to ensure equal access to them. The leisure card gives us an opportunity to better understand the potential of recreational activities.”
The biggest challenge in launching and establishing the fritidskort, Larsson says, is communication.
Since the programme is not administered through municipalities, the implementing organisations lack direct contact with families across different regions. “We need to work closely with local communities to reach the families who would benefit from the leisure card most. The Finnish model for leisure activities and Roskilde’s partnership approach are good examples of how targeted efforts can successfully engage the right families.”
The initiative has strong backing from the current government, but with parliamentary elections approaching, Larsson acknowledges that the future government’s stance on the programme remains uncertain. “That said, beyond government support, it’s encouraging to see that similar initiatives exist in other Nordic countries. Their success serves as a strong motivator.”
Impact isn’t just about numbers but individual stories
The process of measuring improvements to child and adolescent well-being and the prevention of social exclusion is neither quick nor straightforward. We Foundation’s primary goal is to encourage organisers of leisure activities and those funding them to assess their impact. Only with clear objectives and defined metrics can we determine whether financial support for hobbies has achieved the desired effect.
In Turku, Roskilde and Sweden, efforts are being made to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of leisure card initiatives using various indicators.
Representatives from all three countries seem particularly interested in whether these models increase participation in recreational activities and whether they help keep young people engaged in hobbies throughout their teenage years, a time when many typically drop out.
In Turku, short-term monitoring focuses specifically on the number of participants and dropouts. In the long term, well-being indicators for children and young people can also be tracked.
“The national LIITU research shows that if a child is involved in a sports club, they are more likely to meet the physical activity recommendations for health,” says Markus Kalmari.
Sweden’s impact assessment follows a similar framework, measuring the usage rate of the leisure card and its long-term effects on young people’s mental and physical health.
Additionally, qualitative research is being conducted to explore attitudes towards recreational activities, barriers to access and ways to support families in adopting the leisure card. This research is being carried out before the model’s implementation and again two years after its launch.
Roskilde’s team is also interested in how committed children and adolescents are to their hobbies and whether the partnership model helps them stay involved. An internal survey was conducted in 2022 and repeated in 2024–2025 to evaluate the partnership model’s impact.
Data from 2022 shows that 83 percent of children who started a hobby in a club within the partnerships network were still participating, whereas in other clubs, the retention rate was 59 percent.
However, Lind Olsen emphasises that not all impacts can be measured quantitatively – some emerge through personal stories from children’s everyday lives. Helping even one child makes a difference.
“The money we spend on building partnerships is roughly equivalent to the cost of keeping one adolescent in prison for a year. So when we hear someone say that their hobby has helped them stay out of prison, it has significant meaning both for the individual and for society.”
One common understanding has emerged across all countries: access to hobbies must be supported, but that alone is not enough. To reach children and young people – and to ensure that their participation yields positive outcomes not just for them but for society – cooperation between multiple stakeholders is essential.
Ultimately, only long-term results will reveal whether subsidised hobbies can create a meaningful impact on individuals, communities and society as a whole.
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