Our SFUWOL project was started in Finland and Utajärvi upper secondary school last Sunday the 19th of November 2017.
We spent the very first day in snowy city of Oulu in Northern Finland exploring the city and visited its most popular sights. For example the Nallikari beach certainly left everyone cold. Maybe the welcoming smile of Toripolliis statue warmed us up at least a little bit. We also explored the museum of Northern Ostrobothnia https://www.ouka.fi/oulu/luuppi-english/northern-ostrobothnia-museum and learned about the history of the region.
Monday 20 Nov was well-spent at Utajärvi upper secondary school. The day started with the official words of welcome and the introductory school tour. Six students from the group of 20 who take part in this project in Utajärvi upper secondary school gave the tour in a professional manner. These students will then travel to Spain in Feb 2018 for the first LTT +TPM meeting. We had official meeting with the teachers in the morning and then carried on in the afternoon. In the afternoon we also got to hear about local services in Utajärvi. The welfare services were introduced by Ms Hannele Karhu who is the head of the welfare services in Utajärvi. Heikki Keränen introduces YES program which promotes entrepreneurship education in Finnish upper secondary schools http://www.yesverkosto.fi/yes/?lang=en. The promoter of entrepreneurship Mirja Savolainen told us about the local businesses and how they work together to improve the employment opportunities in the area and a local entrepreneur Maiju Mikkola introduced us to her company http://maiku.fi/. In addition, Utajärvi upper secondary students Anniina Leskelä and Inka Honkanen introduced their business and 4H http://utajarvi.4h.fi/4h-yritys/totterobaari/ http://www.4h.fi/en/.
Tuesday 21 Nov started with a workshop by Teea Oja who works as a specialist at Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment in Oulu. She has specialized in lifelong guidance and development of working life quality and training services for unemployed job seekers. She introduced us to many different strategies that we can use with the students throughout this project and we got to take part in different kinds of activities hands on. Ms Oja showed us the website which they created with European partners in an Erasmus+ project. http://wlguidance.wixsite.com/toolbox This toolbox is an output of the Erasmus+ project "Worklife Guidance - Development of guidance and counseling in the workplace". The project was conducted 1.9.2014 - 31.8.2016. Partners of this project were ETSC / Iceland, OAKK / Finland, CFL / Sweden, EC VPL / The Netherlands and MERIG / Austria. The toolbox is definitely beneficial to our project as the different strategies and exercises can help our students in thinking about their future careers.
Tueday afternoon was all about the Rokua Geopark.http://www.rokuageopark.fi/en/experience. Project Manager Mikko Kiuttu introduced us the unique Rokua Geopark area and why it has received UNESCO Geopark status. We also learned about the business side of the Geopark organisation and what it means to many local entrepreneurs to have this status. Mikko also told about the educational side to Geopark and the collaboration with the local schools. Utajärvi upper secondary school is one of the first schools in the world to have the status of a Geopark school.
After the more formal intorduction to the area Thomas Virta took us to experience Geopark first hand. We hiked in the snow and put our feet and hands in the cold snowy ground. Thomas showed us what kind of plants are typical for the area and how the are really is formed over sand dunes.
In the evening we had an official Erasmus+ dinner at RokuaSpa restaurant. We spent the evening in a very lovely and friendly atmosphere. Utajärvi upper secondary school principal Jari Kettukangas and the head of the department of education Erkki Väänänen joined the dinner. Nina Raappana and Aila Raappana from Utajärvi upper secondary school Erasmus+ team also joined the dinner and told us about their ongoing Erasmus+ project. In addition, Mirja Savolainen took part in our celebration too. All the project partners received the official certificate of attendance at the end of the dinner after which is was time to say goodbyes. Until next time...Manresa, Spain and then it is time for both LTT and TPM. See you soon and thank you everyone for coming to Finland. We will have a great time during these two years and learn many new and valuable things in career counselling and what Europe has to offer for future careers.