keskiviikko 25. syyskuuta 2013

Coal footstep of my Flow




It's now finally time to close Flow4YU -project from my side. This final countdown  has been published in our national professional youth work magazine Nuorisotyö a bit earlier. Now some feedback to all those who have no possibility to read Nuorisotyö.

To be honest: I'm not so internationally oriented youthworker. Of cource we all have our exceptions and mine is my strange interest and love to Northwestern Russia but it's another story.

In the beginning of 2012 I simply became a part of Flow4YU -project which had direction to south. I jumped into a rolling train, they had already started in Ravenna, North Italy. Really interesting 17 month experience I have to admit though I was a bit suspicious in the beginning of my Flow story.

I am not quite sure about the final results: did we all manage to improve the communication between youngsters and local politicians. Maybe. Of cource there were a lot of different kind of activities and meetings in all partner municipalities. That was cool to notice.

Culture differences were big and project youngsters in Finland were much younger than elsewhere. From the first steps it was obvious that we in Finland had more to take abroad than to bring home. Our structures for youngsters to say their opinion are quite developed compared to for instance Italy.

It seems to be so that it's practically impossible for Italian youngsters to meet leading politicians and other desicionmakers in a same room. From this point of view it was really cool when we had during project's Inari youthmeeting the first in English hold Inari youth parliament meeting. Inari guyes Jaakko and Ville made a marvellous presentation about Tornio - Inari youngsters' visit to Finnish Parliament where the youngsters met two ministers and all seven Lapland Parliament members. Big way for Italian youngsters to go to reach this, they just started their local meetings during Flow. But during project they started the first ones and it was really cool too.

And by the way: it was cool to listen Jaakko's and Ville's honest speaking about their experiences about how the politicians listen youngsters in Inari. We have still a lot of road to go too, things are not solved, no way...



I took part to projectmeetings in Mjölby, Southern Sweden, in Fidenza, Nothern Italy near by Parma city and in Rovaniemi big city. In my Flowprogram was of cource the biggest youthmeeting during project in Inari in december 2012. To the final ceminar in Dubrovnik, Croatia I travelled too. Finally I was out only from two Italian meetings: Ravenna's kick off -event and Cervia youthmeeting.

Of cource everything gave experiences, views to different cultures and ways to work for wellfare of youngsters, lot of new nice people to know etc... I had never before visited Croatia and I'll never forger the kindness we got by our hostesses. Really cool and nice. And really interesting because we don't remember enough the fact that there has been a really cruel war going on not more than 20 years ago. In Europe. That was touching to see the effort to create better Croatia. Obvious similarity to my favorite foreign area: Murmansk region...


When doing youthwork one must travel. Here up in the North it's part of the business on such level that you don't think about it so much. During Flow I however, maybe for the first time ever, started to think about coal footstep of youth work in generally and on the other hand I started to think about the effectivity of how we use our work time and about effectivity of all travelling what we do when doing youth work.

I tried to find a calculator to tell what was my coal footstep during my Flow4YU -career: airplane (14.600 km, 22.5 h), personal car (1.640 km, 19.5 h), bus or a minivan (125 km, 3.0 h), train (780 km, 10.0 h), mountain elevator (2 km, 15 min) and tram (5 km, 30 min).

To national project meeting in Jyvaeskylae we from Inari didn't travel. We were sitting in a video meeting room at Ivalo library. That was cool and good for coal footstep of project: 1.800 km and 20 hours travelling/person less.

However a lot of climate changing sin was done. My personal statistic says totally about 17.150 km and 56 hours in different kinds of vehicles. It makes me think....

Skoeoe

Case Flow4YU:

closed...




 

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