I attended this two-day seminar with high expectations, and luckily, I got even more than I expected!
The seminar was organized well and the programme was extremely interesting. Especially the quest speakers deserve to be applauded for their presentations. I want to highlight few of those presentations that made a huge impact on me.
Päivi Rissanen's presentation: "A hopeless case? An auto ethnography of getting mentally ill and rehabilitation of it" was impressive and highly emotional. One could not listen to her and not be touched by her life story. In her presentation she taught me that dreams can come true, anything is possible and one should never give up. Also, she is an example of a person who bravely talks about her mental health problems without shame or quilt, and wants to use her difficult experiences as a tool for helping others. An eye-opener for sure.
Secondly I want to mention Jemina Heinonen's presentation about Global Clinic. The information she gave was all new to me, including the fact that there even is such a place! She painted a very sad picture of the situation concerning undocumented migrants in Finland and their rights and limited possibilities concerning health care. I was also stricken by the numbers of how much cheaper it would actually become to treat these people equally, than prevent them from having treatment. The situation in Finland is shameful and unbearable.
Finally, I want to mention our guest students who I got to know during the weekend, those especially from Norway. I learned a lot about the service system in Norway and how it differs from our own. There was a lot that we could learn about their way of dealing with migrants, not to mention implement their good practices in our service system.
Tiia Suutarinen
Master level student at Diak
Bachelor of Social Services
Youth worker
Works in the Helsinki City Youth Department
Does outreach youth work in the streets of downtown Helsinki
Facebook (work): Tiia Asemanseutu
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