In June 2024, 3 members of the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, Laura Pierce (Building Futures Coordinator), Finbarr Savage (Building Futures Learner) and Lucy Dempsey (Shaping Futures Learner) were fortunate enough to partake in an Erasmus+ KA1 visit to Helsinki with Aontas. This particular project focuses on the mobility of Adult and Community Education and gave learners the opportunity to visit a range of organisations working with marginalised groups, empowering them through adult education. While there we learnt about various approaches to Adult Education, shared experiences and knowledge with staff and learners on the programmes.
Twelve of us travelled in total including 3 from the INOU, Lorraine, Tracy and Emer from Roscommon Women’s Network, Kathleen, Mary and Paula from Longford Womens Link and Lorraine O’Connor and Rachael Ryan from Aontas. The first day we spent travelling, getting to know each other and taking in some of the beauty of Helsinki.
We had an early start the second day as Aontas had organised for us to visit three very different organisations working with marginalised groups in Helsinki.
• The first was Jopta, this is a service center for employment and continuous learning (SECLE) that supports the availability of skilled labor and the development of working-age individuals' competencies. We were very impressed with the continuous work they do with workers to excel in their careers, with free training and education as part of their employment. The Finnish care for the whole family in a holistic approach, Childcare, extended leave for new parents with full salary, excellent health care and excellent educational prospects.
• The second was Nicehearts, Local Community Mothers, was set up to support women who immigrated to Finland as adults and succeeded in establishing themselves there by learning the language and figuring out new procedures. The work done here is both heartwarming and inspirational, seeing how they work to empower the women and communities to integrate into Finnish society without losing their own identity or culture. Meeting this group was a very humbling experience. Meeting immigrant women from many different parts of the world, who worked together to build supportive groups to stay connected with their own culture. The most important training for these groups was to learn the Finnish language, which is very difficult. There are many barriers if you don't speak the full Finnish language, and not many opportunities.The Women were very keen to learn Finnish.
• The third was Pienperhe, who work with single parent families through peer-to-peer groups, family cafés, outings, camps, and other events where parents meet others going through similar experiences and kids play with one other. Again, this was a very inspirational and innovative community organization working under the guiding principles of empowerment, inclusion and participation offering support to single parents and role models to their children.
Day three we were partaking in the EAEA conference on adult education which was organized by KVS, The Lifelong Learning Foundation. It was overwhelming to see the passion, commitment and drive for adult education from the people involved in community education across Europe. It gives hope that there are people out there who value it and are fighting for its place in the education system. As for the former Finnish President, Tarja Halonen, what a woman. She is a force to be reckoned with and when she started speaking it made sense why education in general plays such a part of Finnish society. We, Finbarr and Lucy, were lucky to enough to be invited as a panel member on our experience of adult education in Ireland, which for us has been an extremely positive and empowering experience. It was also great to be part of the workshop looking at adult education in terms of what works, the challenges and what could be improved upon. Overall, the conference was a real eyeopener.
On our last day we met with Hildi from KVS and got to hear more about the inspirational and innovative work which they are doing with marginalised groups, not only in Finland but worldwide, even in dangerous parts of the world, but it doesn't stop them. Their work is amazing and there should be a lot more of it done worldwide.
The common theme across all three organisations was their passion for empowering the people they work with. All three organisations are extremely inspiring and have developed innovative ways to promote, encourage, empower and support their members. It was a breath of fresh air to listen to staff and the people using the services. Overall, the whole trip was very valuable and interesting to see the importance that the Finnish Government and Community Organisations put on educating and upskilling their citizens.
We would like to say a massive thank you to Lorraine O’Connor and Rachael Ryan for all their hard work, dedication and professionalism throughout the whole visit. We would also like to give a special mention to our human google maps Rachael who directed us around Helsinki as we would certainly have gotten lost without her.
To finish on a quote, we heard while in Helsinki, "If you fall on hard times in Finland, you don't fall very far. The support NETwork is always ready to catch you."