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Hels ink i - i n fo Issue 5 – 2012 October 29

Contents

Better everyday services

English Supplement

2 City budget for 2013

3 Services for better everyday lives

3 Education, Culture and Personnel Affairs

5 Set out to build good life for young people

7 Shaping the future

7 Power from diversity

8 An information guide on the Finnish comprehensive school

10 Helsinki design of the past

10 Info kit

The budget proposal of the Mayor secures the basic services for Helsinki residents. The City’s investments in new neighbour-hoods and environment friendly public transport contribute to the City’s and her residents’ future.

‘’The Finnish welfare model is facing major changes. The Gov-ernment projects for reforming the municipal structure as well as the social services and health care will change the municipali-ties’ operations significantly. In

City budget for 2013:

Securing the basic servicesfuture, the operations will be increasingly controlled through different guarantees and sizing. The municipalities will be even more responsible for our wel-fare,’’ says Jussi Pajunen, Mayor of Helsinki.

The municipal tax rate for next year will not increase and the budget proposal does not include cuts in services. The final total of the budget proposal is 4,5 billion euro.

Increasing productivity is still the City’s aim. The service struc-

tures will be renewed, the organ-ization will be streamlined, e-services will be increased and the use of space will be intensi-fied. The reorganization of Hel-sinki social services and public health care continues, the serv-ices are brought closer to people, transactions will be facilitated and the care chain will be made smoother.

Helsinki will establish an entre-preneurship promotion centre together with

the University of Helsinki and Aalto University. ‘’Besides tradi-tional business counseling, entrepreneurship promotion is also needed to ensure Helsinki’s competitiveness’’, says Pajunen.

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Helsinki’s brand new deputy mayor radiates energy and good-humoured determination. Ritva Viljanen finds her broad sector inspiring and is ener-gized by learning it. Many of the topi-cal issues in Helsinki are familiar to her from her earlier duties: she served in expert and managerial duties with the government for about 30 years, most recently as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior (that is, the ministry’s highest official).

Services

Cultural activities, sports, youth affairs, schools and personnel management: Ritva Viljanen’s duties as Helsinki Deputy Mayor for Education, Culture and Personnel Affairs require skills across the board.

By Rita Ekelund

for better everyday livesEducation, Culture and Personnel Affairs

Education, Culture and Personnel Affairs consume 21 percent of the City of Helsinki budget of 4.3 billion. The biggest portion of these sectors’ funds goes to education, which com-prises comprehensive schools, gen-eral upper secondary schools, vocational schools and the regional Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences.

The city’s cultural sector includes the City of Helsinki Cultural Office, Helsinki City Museum, Helsinki City Library, Helsinki Art Museum and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.

The City of Helsinki Sports Depart-ment produces sports services for many special groups such as the elderly.

The Youth Department supports young people’s growth into active cit-izenship and offers various activities at the department’s youth centres and on the Internet. Learn more from an interview of the department’s new director on page 5.

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Viljanen started in her new office in June. She immediately faced large issues that involve the city’s increasingly interna-tional population, social diver-gence of Helsinki districts, the city’s outlook in education and services for the youth.

Success in education helps to lay a firm foundation for the city’s success. Good achieve-ments by Finnish schools, as assessed by PISA studies, have made the high quality of Finnish education internationally famous. But challenges exist: “About 6.7 percent of our young people in Helsinki are neither studying nor working after com-prehensive school,” Viljanen says, “and the city is home to 17 percent of all socially excluded young people in Finland. The sit-uation is particularly alarming among immigrants. One of my main goals is to improve these numbers.”

The challenges of schools will be growing, as a quarter of all pupils in Helsinki will be of for-eign origin in 15-20 years. How-ever, Viljanen points out that the

“Studies show that cultural activities increase wellbeing. My slogan is, go to cultural activities early rather than to the

doctor late.”

increasingly international nature of Helsinki is a positive factor and strengthens the city’s com-petitiveness. “Helsinki will also have more working-age people than other parts of Finland.”

An international architectural competition on the new Helsinki Central Library is under way. Vil-janen chairs the jury, so she can influence the outcome of the main cultural investment in the city’s near future.

“Varied cultural life is vital for the dynamism of the city, and art brings public spaces to life. Cul-tural activities not only comprise the public cultural offering, but they also comprise individuals’ own activities and residents’ opportunities to be active and participate,” Viljanen declares. “What will remain from our era is culture. Nobody will remember this year’s reference interest rate, but our art and culture will make a permanent mark.”

n Born 1958

n Master of Law, Master of Social Sciences

n Duties at the Ministry of Finance including project manager and senior official 1982–1992

n Legislative Counsellor at the Ministry of Justice 1989–1992

n Director General of the Finnish Population Register Centre 1997–2003

n Administrative Counsellor 1992–1997 and Permanent Secretary 2003–2012 at the Ministry of the Interior

n Elected Helsinki Deputy Mayor responsible for Education, Culture and Personnel Affairs in April 2012 as a Social Democratic Party representative

Translation Johanna Lemola

Ritva Viljanen

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Tommi Laitio dislikes the term socially excluded when applied to young people who are neither studying nor working, at risk of being shut out of society.

“What are we really talking about here?” Laitio asks. “The term social exclusion reflects an ideal of normal life and puts the blame on the young people for the failure of society.”

Tommi Laitio’s principles in steering Helsinki’s youth work are testing of ideas, bold idealism and listening.

for young peoplegood lifeSet out to

By Johanna Lemola

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Laitio speaks as Helsinki’s new top authority of youth work. He started as Director of the City of Helsinki Youth Department in early October.

“What we’re dealing with is young people’s experience and outlook on life. We’re dealing with a situation where young people may lack meaningful things to do, they may not have goals in life, and they may not feel safe at home.”

“The focus of youth work is good life for the youth. It shouldn’t be how to prevent social exclusion but how to strengthen social inclusion. We should focus on goals for young people in life and making young people feel that they are competent and valu-able members of society.”

Including young people“It’s our duty as adults to give young people opportunities to control their lives and plan their

future,” Laitio says. He offers a few examples.

Through a method named Ruuti, young people in Helsinki can take part in the city decision making and realise their own ideas with the support of other young people and the city. Still in an experimental phase, Ruuti is a way of empow-ering young peo-ple. “Our goal is to make Helsinki a city where young people can influence the state of affairs and, as a result, take ownership of their lives and society.”

Some of the most immediate places where young people can take charge are the Youth Department’s youth centres. “Youth centres are common property and very important places for their users,” Laitio affirms.

“Parks are common property to us all, and so is public transpor-tation. Contexts where young people can help to improve them can build sense of ownership.”

Causes of anxiety“We live in a society where the adults’ stress about the future

falls on our youth too early,”

Laitio says. “Sometimes we adults fail in boosting young people’s hopes that we can

tackle major challenges such as climate change.”

He points out the utmost importance of educating young people about global challenges and democracy.

The gravest concern according to Laitio is rising polarisation in wellbeing, especially in urban areas. “After the Second World

War we witnessed a progress towards an equalitarian society, but this progress has slowed down.”

Laitio was born in 1977 to reap the success of the Finnish welfare society.

“Our big challenge today is to renew the promise of equal opportunity. That is a society where all schools give you the tools to make it in life, where you have opportunities for hob-bies despite your parents’ wealth, and where you can stay out safely in the evening in all areas of the city.”

“We need to be able to share more resources. That’s how good cities are built. But we must do this sharing in a way that is fair and drives innovation. This requires a sense that we win more by sharing more. The social benefits of sharing are clear. I feel that is our only chance, both economically and ecologically.”

“The focus of our work is how to strengthen

social inclusion.”

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“When I was in school, there was one boy in my class whose mother was from Spain,” Tommi Laitio recalls. “He rep-resented diversity to us in our suburban community near Hel-sinki. Today my 7-year-old god-son goes to school in the Helsinki suburb of Puotila, where he faces a totally differ-ent world in terms of diversity.”

“We had to study diversity; today’s children in Helsinki are

born to it. They face global phe-nomena in their everyday lives through their peers from other countries and cultures.”

Laitio is very familiar with issues related to diversity. His career history includes four years in youth work in Amsterdam, where video art was used as a tool for youth empowerment.

“More than half of school-aged young people in Amsterdam are non-Dutch by origin. Working with them, I came to understand that immigration says very little about people’s future. Different immigrant groups come from very different backgrounds which pre-dispose them very differently for the future.”

“In Finland, we still may not quite understand all the dimen-sions of diversity. These dimen-sions should be viewed as an asset and source of competence, not as an obstacle.”

Tommi Laitio comes to the City of Helsinki Youth Department from Demos Helsinki, a think tank for the study of the future, focusing on ways to combine sustainability and happiness.

Laitio carries his thinking from Demos Helsinki to his new office.

He envisions the Youth Depart-ment as a laboratory where to test new ideas. One such idea could be new uses of vacated old buildings, where young peo-ple could try out various activi-ties, for example, a motorbike workshop.

“The Youth Department does a vast amount of valuable work,” Laitio says. “Our challenge is to turn our knowledge to benefit other Helsinki units. We should be the expert partner in planning processes, such as how to design a sports park to include young people. We certainly don’t want to own young people.”

Laitio reminds us of a self-evi-dent but an all-too-often-for-gotten truism: “Young people live in the same society with the rest of us, so their issues relate to us all.”

He turns to the department’s big challenge: “We should develop services for young peo-ple that fit the era of diversity. I genuinely feel that this is possi-ble. Helsinki has all the means to be the world’s youth capital.”

Shaping the future Power from diversity

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“The guidebook is an easy-to-read, compact information pack-age tailored for the needs of immigrants,” says Project Planner Sannakaisa Koskinen of the Education Department. “It helps

getting familiar

Is food served at school? How do you dress for the physical education class? What is school photography? These and many other questions that immigrant families in particular may ask are answered by a new guidebook, Getting familiar with school, produced by the City of Helsinki Education Department.

the readers to form an idea of the Finnish school system.”

The information guide has been very well received. “Its popularity shows that it answers a need,” Koskinen comments.

An information guide on the Finnish comprehensive school

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glossaryEnglish Finnish

Getting familiar with school is mostly about the Finnish comprehensive school, but it contains a great deal of other information on education, for example, on preparatory training for upper secondary schools available for immigrants. There is information on learning one’s own religion and mother tongue, courses in Finnish as a second language, and instruction that prepares children for basic education.

“The City of Helsinki offers prepara-tory education that provides immi-grant children with sufficient Finnish language skills to enter Finnish schools,” Koskinen explains, pointing out that all children in need will have a place in preparatory education.

Getting familiar with school is available in Finnish, English, Russian, Estonian and Somali. The Finnish language version is available online in PDF format at www.hel.fi/hki/opev/fi/Palvelut/Esitteet+ja+oppaat. The other language versions are available at http://www.hel.fi/hki/opev/en/Services/Brochures+and+guides, and print copies can be ordered from the Education Department’s information desk at Hämeentie 11 A, phone (09) 310 86400, email neuvonta.opetusvirasto@hel.fi

Familiar tuttu

School koulu

Information tieto

Comprehensive school peruskoulu

Physical education class liikuntatunti

Education department opetusvirasto

Upper secondary shools toisen asteen oppilaitokset

Preparatory education valmistava opetus

Religion uskonto

Mother tongue äidinkieli

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Helsinki City Museum’s most extensive exhibition of the World Design Capital year is Made in Helsinki 1700–2012. The exhibition showcases the roots of Helsinki design all the way to the time when the concept of design was not familiar in Finland. It reveals surprising viewpoints into the world of design items and hints that the history of Finnish design could be told in a different manner.

Various items from 18th-century Helsinki to the modern times are on display: from silver beakers to enamel buckets, square pianos to curtain tassels and millinery hats to outdoor overalls.

Helsinki’s handicraft tradition is very much alive today, and the exhibition showcases the master-pieces of modern craftsmen side by side with museum pieces.

Design of the past

n Made in Helsinki 1700–2012Hakasalmi Villa, Mannerheimintie 13b Open till 1.9.2013 Wed–Sun 11–17, Thu 11–19 Free entry

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Helsinki Info is a printed newspaper published by the City of Helsinki and distributed to all Helsinki households six times a year.

Helsinki Info’s English Supplement resembles the main publication in format but is published online on the City Website, also six times a year.

Next issue 3.12.2012

Publisher: City of Helsinki www.hel.fi

Editor-in-Chief: Rita Ekelund Phone (+358 9) 310 36074 City of Helsinki, Communications P.O. Box 1 FI-00099 City of Helsinki, Finland Graphic design: Guassi Oy

Send us feedback: helsinki-info.palaute@hel.fi

Information for all residentsVirka Info telephone service (09) 310 11111 (Mon-Fri 9–15) and information point in the City Hall lobby, address Pohjoisesplanadi 11–13 (Mon–Fri 9–19, Sat–Sun 10–16). www.virka.fi

Info Bank is an online service aimed at immi-grants, offering information on Finnish society and life in Finland in 15 languages. The website also contains local information on Helsinki.www.infopankki.fi

Info kit

Do you want to subscribe to Helsinki Info English Supplement? Send your e-mail address to helsinki-info.palaute@hel.fi