Did you know?

Did you know that here in Helsinki was held Norddiakoni Intensive course – “Mental health and Wellbeing – focus on homeless and underprivileged populations” on 21.-26.4.2016? Well in case you did not, I will tell you about it.

There were participants from Finland, Norway and Sweden, students and teachers. What all the participants had in common was that they all took care of other people and their wellbeing.  I took part on it 23.–24.4.2016. It was rather interesting. Topics of the seminar were social inclusion, loneliness, mental health and undocumented immigrants and overall what we should, could and would do to those issues?

Students and teachers were discussing after the presentations of the various measures that should be done. How to activate people who feels loneliness or hopelessness in their life and those who suffer from poverty and unemployment. How to help those who live with the help of social benefits from year to year. How to help people who have stopped trying. Not to forget the people who have been forced to leave their country against their will, leaving everything behind just to find themselves in a country, with their high expectations of life and yet their new home country might only have a little to offer. In the worst case, they might not even have a legal permission to be in the country. They would have to live their lives without rights in welfare state.

What kind of activities do we need? What do we do? Because all the people have the right to be a member of our society.

All of the intensive course presentations were global, thought worthy and demanding subject’s activity. For example think about loneliness, homelessness, undocumented immigrants, poverty and hopelessness. Even though the topics covered the underprivileged of the society, not a single subject seemed hopeless. I personally followed the presentations with great interest. I got the feeling that we should come up with something right now, so that we can minimize people´s worries and make the world better place to live.  We must and we can do something to help each other. I suggest that we start the change from ourselves; our attitudes and how we face the people. We should take care of people and to be interested in other people’s wellbeing like we are with our children and loved ones.

Päivi Rissanen, who has been mental health patient for 27 years gave a presentation that brought hope and reassurance that nothing is impossible. Päivi´s survival is quite incredible. Her presentation condensed the whole aim and understanding of the intensive course. Having been a mental health patient for 27 years and now being Ph.D. Päivi told us that we need discussions and debates as well as interaction between people, respect for others, trust, caring and understanding. Rissanen´s survival story is quite touching and sweet. She took the help of a nurse, who saw her as herself as an individual rather than a mental patient. I love that Päivi shared her story with the rest of us. Hope is what we should all remember, isn’t it?

Change the attitude – Join me 

Who am I?

Marja Walldén-Hirvonen, student

Degree Program in promoting the social exclusion of health and well-being. Masters degree (YAMK), Diaconia University of Applied Sciences, Helsinki, Finland

In Every Society We Need Each Other

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE INTENSIVE SEMINAR

Sakari Kainulainen showed us on Saturday as a part of his lecture interesting statistics and indicators about exclusion in Scandinavia. He told us that in EU every fourth people is at risk of poverty. He reminded us that as a professionals we should wake up and help our clients to fight against poverty. Our job is to find ways to help those people back to active citizens because everybody has the right to be a member of society. Passive waiting isn't the target but active doing is. Luckily we don't need to be alone. Welfare state and social transfers are helping us with that.

Already Aristotle knew that having good friends is important for us and a good way to decrease loneliness. Sakari Kainulainen reminded us about that. He told that about 9 percent of Finns are feeling themselves lonely. The truth is that nobody wants to be lonely. In every society we need each other. Loneliness is negatively linked with emotions. The best situation is when you have about five close friends. If you have over 20 friends your satisfaction is getting lower.

On Saturday I got a chance to get to know Kurvi addiction treatment center. The visit was interesting and didactic to me. In my opinion that kind of job is very important but difficult also. All steps of success with their clients are very small. The main point of my learning process there was that if you want to build confidence with excluded people you shouldn't highlight your profession. As an example in Kurvi the doctor is not wearing his white doctor jacket at all.

During this intensive course we used a lot of English. All lectures and different kind of group works were executed by English. My English skills aren't so good. I understand quite okay when I'm listening or reading English, but I'm a little bit shy to speak it. Before this weekend I was a little bit nervous how much will I understand of lectures and how can I talk with international students. Now when the intensive course is over I can say that I survived quite well. I was nervous in vain. I took part actively of chatting in Twitter. I shared and published thoughts there. That was a first time when I published something in English on Twitter. I'm so satisfied that I did it. Now the step is lower to do that again.

I think that for me getting know to Kurvi was the best part of this weekend. The second best thing was that I got a chance to learn and brush up little bit my jargon skills. I wrote down some words which I might need in the future for exam-ple in my work with clients or when I'm doing my thesis.

Who am I?

I'm Riikka Siniluoto, 33 years old student from Espoo, Finland. I'm studying in master degree programme of social and health services in Helsinki in Diaconia University of Applied Sciences. I'm working in Ohjaamo Espoo. It's a one stop guidance center for under 30 years old people with several problems in their lives. Young people can get help for different kind of problems from different kind of experts in Ohjaamo Espoo. My colleagues and I are professionals in social services and in education and employment issues.

We are helping and guiding our clients for example to get a job, a place to study or with difficulties they have with housing, health, finance, free time or relationships. The purpose of Ohjaamo Espoo is to help young people with those problems easily and quick without bouncing them in social and health services or in society system. Ohjaamo Espoo's target is to decrease social ex-clusion of young people in Espoo.