National Family History Month (NFHM) is an initiative of the Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations (AFFHO). NFHM has been an annual event since August 2006 when it was celebrated during the first week of August. Due to its ever increasing popularity, NFHM was increased to the whole month of August from 2013. My role as voluntary coordinator is to maintain the website and event calendar and to promote NFHM as widely as I can to everyone interested in genealogy and family history.

For individuals researching their family history, it is a great opportunity to participate in events that may be happening near where they live and in recent years, there has also been a variety of online events too.

For genealogy and family history societies it is a time to promote your society to the hundreds of thousands of people across Australia who are researching their genealogy and family history and to help them understand the social context within which their ancestors lived. Reports from previous years indicate that many societies gain new members during August while participating in NFHM activities.

Why not join in the fun and excitement of National Family History Month?

Societies do not need to be a member of AFFHO to participate. Participation can be as simple as calling your August monthly meeting a NFHM meeting, or one of your library open days a NFHM open day and entering the event/s onto the NFHM web calendar at. Or you can organise a special event such as a book launch, seminar, beginners session or anything else associated with genealogy and family history.

Archives and libraries are also welcome to participate in NFHM and by adding your events to the NFHM web calendar many more people will see your events and help to make your events even more successful. Many archives and libraries are regular hosts of NFHM events in August but it would be wonderful if there were even more. As I am away for three weeks in July it would be appreciated if your events were received before 1 July as it is a manual process to place them on the website.

Individuals can see what is happening near them by visiting the events page for their state and then checking for their postcode, but also check surrounding postcodes because some events may be worth the travel time. Remember too that there are online events that you can do in the comfort of your own homes.

NFHM has some great sponsors and in 2015 our major sponsors (so far) are AFFHO and Ancestry and the National Archives of Australia is again the launch sponsor.

In addition there are numerous prize sponsors who have donated prizes for both societies and individuals. This year there is a special bonus prize for societies who enter their event/s before 30 June 2015. Please see the NFHM Home page for terms and conditions and the Sponsors page for details of all the prizes and sponsors.

Australian Genealogy and family history societies with events in the NFHM web calendar are automatically entered into the prize draw and individuals can enter from 1 August 2015 up until midnight on 27 August 2015. The prize draw will be on 29 August. No individual entries will be accepted before 1 August 2015 and entrants must be located in Australia.

Why not Like the NFHM Facebook page and see all the latest news. Our Twitter tag is #NFHM2015 to follow any tweeting before and during August.

Let us all join together to make NFHM 2015 the biggest and best NFHM yet!