WE ALL NEED EACH OTHER

In the last few days a thought has come to my mind that how much we people need each other in this world. It seems that people are somehow individualcentered and they feel that their are cabable of doing all things by themselves. Yet we still need each other, as we always have and always will need in the future.

On saturday morning we listened a seminar by Sakari Kaunulainen about Poverty in wellfare. Sakari had gathered lots of different facts and statistics and the presentation was good. I was left thinking of a picture of happiness and sadness, richness and poverty. A person doesn't achieve happiness with money and material things but instead with other people and love. Social problems and social exclusion can be prevented. But it demands sense of community and taking care of each other.

"A participating person has a feeling that he or she is meaningful part of entity, sosiety. Person is heard as a human being and he or she affects the course of his or her life as well as the things around him or her." (Sakari Kainulainen 23.4.2016)

I'm doing my thesis about immigrants and their social intregration to Finland. I have been thinking a lot about the things that we can do to help them settle in Finland and preventing the risk of social exclusion. We still have a lot to do with the same target with native Finnish youngsters.

Last week I was interviewing a Somali woman and asked her what was the hardest thing in settling down to Finland? She told me that people don't talk to foreigners that much or meet each other easily. Nobody greets you in the streets and you don't have feelings of belonging to some local society. It's hard to find new friends when you don't speak the native lanquage and there is not many places where to meet friends and share your thoughts.

I visited a facility called Supported Housing Unit for Minor Asylum Seekers with my seminar group. There lives about 40 Young men from different parts of the world. They don't yet know if they are allowed to stay in Finland, and if they will, where will they be located. In Finland we have a system that all minor immigrants system places fast into schooling and other activities. This is a good thing to help people integrating and preventing unnecessary waiting and frustration. Mika told us that many of asylum seekers have already learnd some finnish. They are active in eg. playing football and other activities. They are intrested in integrating to Finnish society but how does our system really help them in that? 

Nowadays the system is so that they can be located into any part of Finland after receiving recidence permit. This means that a person who is barely used to living in Helsinki, may end up to Joensuu in six months. That means starting from the beginning life once again.

I have been thinking of the situation and I feel that we are obligated to take care of each other, including the immigrants. We should develop a system or network of "godfathers and godmothers" or "sponsor families" that keep in touch with each other and also keep the immigarants active in networking. These would also be useful for preventing native Finns from the risk of social exclosure but especially important for immigrants for helping them to settle in the local society.

Who am I? 

 

I'm Reija Arola, studying Masters degree of social services at DIAK.  I currently work as a project coordinator at Hyvinkää Youth Housing Association but I used to be a deacon at Parish of Tuusula. I'm a mother of five.