CULTURE CRASH 5-7.6.2013


I juni ordnade jag ett kulturevenemang för unga i Raseborg tillsammans med mina studiekamrater Elin Sundell och Ian Granström. Det gick ut på att de unga fick välja en workshop som de fick möjligheten att arbeta med i tre dagar och fördjupa sig i ämnet tillsammans med en professionell workshopdragare.
Vi valde att inrikta oss på workshops som inte vanligtvis erbjuds för de unga i kommunen för att kanske väcka intresset hos dem och få detta till ett årligt evenemang.

Workshopparna de fick välja mellan var Dans med Evelina Lundström, Grafitti med Theo Sandström, Bänd och sång med Simon Reinikainen, Fotografering med Emilia Nyberg och Experimentell konst med Petri Horttana som alla har en anknytning till Raseborg. Vi valde att anställa personer med anknytning till kommunen för att synliggöra den kompetens som finns i vår kommun.

Under dessa tre dagar jobbade de unga hårt med att lära sig nya saker, få använda sin kreativitet och bygga upp någonting att visa upp på fredagens avslutning där alla deltagare skulle visa upp vad de gjort under evenemangsdagarna. Där hade vi en visning av grafittimålningarna, tavlorna som deltagarna på experimentell konst workshopen gjort, fotoutställning, live musik uppträdande av bänd och sång deltagarna och gemensam zumba med dansgruppen.


Vi hade ett väldigt roligt evenemang tillsammans med ungdomarna och hoppas på att detta blir ett årligt evenemang!

Tack till våra samarbetspartners:
Raseborgs ungdomsfullmäktige
Raseborgs ungdomsbyrå
Seminarieskolan
Serendipity
Kulturbyrån
Unginfo

<3 - Projektledare Sofia Haglund

En del av utvecklingspraktiken avklarad i 10-11.10 i Åbo stadsbiblioteket;

KULTURKONFEKTEN -
GODBITAR GENOM HELA LIVET!



Jag här på bilden var med och arrangerade seminariet tillsammans med Åbo stads kultursekreterare Johanna Slotte, servicehemmen Hemmet, Candolinska servicehemmet och Wilén i Åbo


Seminariet riktade sig till pensionärer, personal inom äldrevårdsomsorg, studeranden och andra intresserade inom ämnet kultur för äldre och blev ett mycket lyckat och omtyckt evenemang!
Läs mer på http://seniorkultur2013.wordpress.com/


Som till näst blir det en hel del roliga och stora projekt på gång, i helt andra inriktningar dock!

Jag har bl.a. blivit kontaktperson för Åbo av regnbågsankan rf och har nu spännande och stora planer på resten av utvecklingspraktiken och examensarbete; att utveckla och bredda verksamheter för Regnbågsankan i Åbo !...Får man ha så här roligt när man studerar...?!

www.teamnovia.fi
-Tydligen. 

<3 : Minerva

team n o v i n g

Denna video tillsammans med ett fint tal  visade vi upp oss med på företagardagen 5.9 för att presentera vårt team ....Noving...,Enjoy! :)


Obs! Musiken är av Flourence and the machine- Breath of life...
Videon är gjord av Novings teammedlem Minerva Ekrelius och bilderna är alla tagna av Sanni Nurmi.


Annars kan jag berätta att vi den här veckan fokuserar på att bestämma projekt inför kommande höst, spännande saker på gång med andra ord!

Studiepeppade hälsningar från Officet! Noving har inlett sitt tredje och sista år och nu ska det blåsas liv i bloggen igen. Snart kommer det att börja sprudla här av intressanta projekt, bokupplevelser, insikter och vardagshälsningar! 

Ny termin, nya krafter. Hoppas ni är lika ivriga som vi över livet i allmänhet. Välkomna med!

<3 Ada

Terveisiä Pohjanmaalta ja Villa Elbalta

Nu har det blivit dags för mig, Julia/Dalle, att summera mina två första veckor som praktikant vid Villa Elba.

Jag hade sedan januari-februari gått i vetskapen om att jag är påväg till Villa Elba på praktik och att jag hamnar i den situationen att finskan är det språk som hörs och talas mest under jobbdagarna.
Något som jag såg som både en utmaning och som ett hinder. Hur skulle jag, den totalt svenskspråkiga flickan från det nästan mest svenskspråkiga stället i hela Österbotten, klara mig två månader på nästan enbart det finska språket som brukar vålla så stora problem.
Med stora och ivriga steg kom jag in till kontoret en dimmig och fuktig måndagsmorgon. Jag träffade många nya människor på en och samma gång och fick sedan sätta mig ned framför en dator och sedan började min handledare prata och förklara allt vad jag borde veta. Kan ju ärligt medge att kanske en fjärdedel av allt hon sa gick förbi för att inte komma tillbaka, men som tur var så är min handledare sån människokännare att hon märkte snabbt att hon inte ska prata så snabbt på finska med mig.

Mina arbetsuppgifter varierar från dag till dag och som resultat av det så får jag testa på en massa olika saker och på så sätt få en bred uppfattning om allt vad som händer på den internationella sidan.
Jag svarar på mejl, jag planerar studiebesök, jag planerar och förbereder "youth exchanges", jag översätter texter (finska-svenska, svenska-finska, engelska-finska, svenska-engelska) och så vidare.  Detta är bara en bråkdel av allt jag får göra och som blir lagt på mitt bord.

Jag stortrivs på detta ställe och jag kan se mig själv sitta här inom några år och jobba. Finskan blir bättre och bättre för var dag som går. Visst säger man lite fel ibland med folk runt omkring mig förstår vad jag vill få sagt och jag förstår dem så alla är glada och nöjda!

Kiitos ja näkemiin!

/ Dalle

Last week of school

Goodmorning!

So Noving starts the last week of school for this year, after this we are of on our internship for the whole month of May.

Last week is full of the last documentation work that has to be done for the year and preparation for the internship, man of us are going back to our hometowns for the internship so it is a lot moving aswell.

We will finnish of our last time together (for now) with a reflection on thursday and planning of the upcoming year and of friday we are going to Tallinn for a little last celebration for the ending of the schoolyear :)

Don´t worry, even though the schoolyear ends we will still keep the blogg updated with the latest stuff from Noving. ;)

Have a great spring and summer everybody!

Greetings

// Ian

Hello everyone!

Hi everyone, Ian here!

I haven´t done a blog post for a long time so I´m going to tell you a little bit where our teams is now and what we have been doing lately.

Let´s start off with some projects. We have done a lot of big projects lately together with TeamNoviabo and the Red Cross.

 We did a huge project togheter with TeamNoviabo in Pargas to improve the city center and to make to city more attractive and lively to the Pargas citizens as well as the tourist and the project ended up with great results and we are looking forward to see some changes in Pargas city in the upcoming years!

The Red Cross project was a little bit different then the other projects we have done. Team Noving was functioning as Instructors for the Red Cross program On the run, and the project went of in Dalsbruk for the elementary and highschool students in the city.

On the first day we got educated in our rolls that we would have during the game, and the second day we did the On the run from 7a.m to 8.30p.m. It was a very intensive two days in Dalsbruk but in the end it fell good to do something together with a bigger organisation and to get a look inside a world wide program and to be a part of it when it is put in practical use.

Other than the projects we have also arranged a trip for Team Noving to Tallinn for some quality time with the team, it has been kind of caotic these few couple of weeks so it will be nice to take som time of the work and get to do something fun for a change!

That was all from me this time, take care and lift heavy!

/ Ian

Leading a Moving Noving

I’m Noving’s current team leader for this spring. What this means is that I’m going in a team leading forum with other team leaders in Novia where we share our experiences in leadership, read relating literature and reflecting in how we could develop our leadership within our own team!

I’ve made a concrete teamleader-contract which says what my learning goal and achievements I'd like to develop in my leadership and what my concrete duties as a team leader are. These duties have also been decided with the team; the team has also came up with a few of the duties they expect from me as a leader. Few of my official duties that we have decided are:

·    Taking care/keep track of common deadlines

·    Make decisions when team is stamping on one place

·    Lead the team (obviously)

·    Be the week manager if the supposed one is sick

·    Try to find a solution when team is facing problem’s and dilemmas

Some of these tasks are the most concrete yet the smallest tasks I have...!

In the team leader contract, I’m supposed to make my goals measurable and concrete so I can after spring see black on white what went good and what didn’t. However, one of my biggest insights this spring has been that leadership is not always so concrete and measurable! There is not one way to be a leader that everybody sees and can say what exactly that leader is doing.

I’ve realized from this time as a leader that leading a team is very moveable and abstract. It’s about adjusting your leadership and methods towards the situation as it occurs, and sometimes these methods are not even official methods, but a way of being, a way of interacting.

With other words - Leadership is so much more than just managing. So far one of my feedbacks have been more like a manager – focused on tasks and results. It haven’t been all in waste, that was good for that moment – but the team is moving all the time, which means I can’t stand on one place and do the same drill, I have to move with them to see what’s needed for this moment.

So now I’ve been focusing on having inspirational and positive energy as a leader in order to inspire the team to fight these two last weeks of school before internship – which is not very measurable or result focused, but being motivated and feeling work-joy can give a lot of great result itself!

The rest if my very short time I have left of being a team leader, I’ll work a lot with myself so that I can keep that “moving leadership style”, not to get stuck on leading in a certain way, focused on certain thing, but to adjust, and really see where team is heading at… Where team Noving actually is heading at, we’re going to clear once and for all when we are creating team Novings common goal on this Thursday’s training session. To be continued…!

Happy & sunny greetings, Minerva :)

Inno58h!

Hi guys!

Regards from Kunstenniemi! I and ~50 other university students are here spending next three days innovating and brainstorming around assignments from different companies. You can go to our blog and Twitter and read there more about our client, Digita Oy and what we have been doing during last two months.


love,
Sanni

WAR in Roparnäs succeeded

At Sunday evening me, Veronika, Minerva and Dalle arrived in Björköby, Korsholm, where I grew up. We also stayed there during the 3 days we were in Ostrobothnia. We started planning for the project prosecution for the following day.

At Monday morning when we arrived to the classroom in Novia where we would be during the day, were there already students waiting for us.

We started off with a check in, where the students told about their mood and where they were from, since it was a multicultural group, we were interested to know. The group, NU12, was curious about what we were going to do and they were very polite.

When the real work started I kicked off with the communication workshop. The workshop was about actively listening, straight communication and how to handle conflicts in a group. Minerva, Veronika and Dalle filled me in if they also had a point with something I said or different examples. We helped each other J NU12 asked questions when they did not understand or wanted us to help them find a solution to their problem, if they had one. They gave us different examples and asked how to do in those kinds of cases. It was really interesting too for us, since they also said that they would not do it in that way that we suggested, because of the cultural differences. It was no big things, but still a difference, that was really interesting to see J

After lunch we started with the more interactive part of the day. We had a four corner value exercise. For each sentence that was read, the students went to a corner, whether they agreed, disagreed, did not know or had an own opinion. Then we discussed the issues and different values. We also had the articles of human rights with us and then the students were supposed to read an article and then have a discussion about it. There were of course many different opinions and the discussion and dialogue when really well. You could see a process from the previous workshop part set in motion already, which also showed us in the projectgroup that we did a good work! J in the check out NU12 told that they appreciated the workshop and left with a happy mood, so did we J

On Tuesday in the check in we found out that the students actually had more expectations than the precious day because it had been so informative, different and fun. Tuesday was reserved for projectwork. We introduced them to all the documents that we are using as tools in the projects and why these are good to know about and how to use them. NU12 got a little confused and there was some frustration, but in the end, the students came up with really nice ideas for a project to do during international nurses day(http://www.icn.ch/publications/2013-closing-the-gap-millennium-development-goals-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1/). Some of them wrote a group contract for their projectgroups and some even did do some more documentation.

NU12 really relied in us, which was also gaining trust for each other. Now we’re keeping in touch so we can help them with the project if they need any. And I am going to be there on international nurses day. We could see the process in their communication just the two days we were there and we are proud of the work we all did together :) 

Proud projectleader

julle *

All mixed up!

 
Last Thursday, for the celebration of the WAR, week against racism, (and just for fun)
we arranged a Multicultural Speed-date Evening in Kirjakahvila here in Turku.
The original plan was to reach as many people as possible, from as many cultural
backgrounds s possible.
It was lots of other parties too in Turku, so in the end, it were only few of us there. The range of nationalities was still: Finnish, French, Greekish and Chinese. So, quite a bunch of people.

Whereas immigration and refugee has grown during the last centuries, it has become easy to travel especially when you’re a student. It’s not a wonder if You hear someone behind You in the supermarket speak mandarin china or German. It's almost more common nowadays to have been a exchange-student than not to have been one. So we're globalizing also socially, and as it happens so fast, we may not have the time to actually think what we have in front of our eyes.

That is: our fellow men.

As I sat there tired of the tuff week, I suddenly realized again, how lucky I am.

To be able to spent time with these wonderful, open people, who don’t have a racist bone in their bodies. In fact, quite the opposite. And I'm learning something new, all the time, every minute! Totally free of charge! Now I know that men in China cant marry before their 22, that in France You can still smoke in public places, that Greek women think women in Finland behave against good manners when they speak "like men"... and well, you know. No huge revealing, but eye-openers to others everyday life.

And there we were, all mixed up. Our languages, traditions, and genes.

Under the very same sky, as all of the rest of the mankind.

 -Ninnu

W-A-R!

NO!  I'm not talking about an actual war with soldiers, guns and so on. I'm talking about the international event called "Week Against Racism". That week took place last week, week 12, and team Noving had been planning an eventful week to spread the word about this week and what it is all about.

We had the first project on Tuesday the 19th and that was an adventure with Human Rights as content and the Haavi boardmembers and laidies from Daisy Laidies as participants. The adventure took place in the forest in Ruissalo right outside the centre of Turku. The participants were divided into two groups and the groups were supposed to gather fifteen Human Rights each and give them to the Queen of the Forest. The tricky thing here was that there were bad people running around in the forest and these could come and take one or two Rights from the participants. All the Rights all came back in to safe hands of the Queen and the peace in the Forest was restored.
The praticipants liked the idea of participating in an adventure and they all went home with big smiles on their faces.

On Wednesday four people went to the swedishspeaking high school in Turku to educate second year students about racism through times. There was a brainstorming about what racism is and then there was a discussion about how racism have been seen through times. There was also a discussion about culture and religion, how these two can either create racism or how it can solve racismproblems around the world.
A valueexercise is always a good way to get the praticipants involved and a good way to get a discussion going. There were alot of different opinions and great discussions and we all would have liked to have more time to discuss about many topics.
The students said that this was very eye-opening and a good reminder for them.

Right after the high school-project half of our team went by bus to Dalsbruk to participate as volunteers in a project called "On the Run". This method is invented by the Red Cross and it is a 24 hour roleplay. The participants in this roleplay are refugees and they are under these 24 hours living the life that all the refugees in the world are living on a daily basis.
On Wednesday evening we participated in an education for all the volunteers who will take place in the roleplay. There was alot of information in a short while and we went to sleep on madresses on the schoolfloor with our brains struggling with itself because of all the info.
When we were in Dalsbruk the roleplay was only (!!) 12 hours because the participants were too young to handle the 24 hour-version.
The participants were running around in the forest, filling out papers that they maybe didn't understand, came to a countryboarder where the guards were not so nice and so on.
We, the members of team Noving, was playing roles like guards, pathleaders, hunters so we didn't have to live the life of refugees but we got to know alot about the process and the daily life of refugees around the world today.

Friday morning two of our team members went to a school in Tammisaari to hold interactive workshops about racism.

On our training session on Friday we had a feedback about this week as a whole and we are proud of what we have done to contribute to a society with less racism in it!

And we sincerely hope that something like this will become a yearly event that becoming Bachelor of Humanities develop into something bigger.

with alot of love from Dalle

On The Run - foreigner's point of view

On Thursday the 21st of March we've had a unique opportunity to be part of the On The Run project. It took place at Dalsbruk elementary school and I'm going to describe it from an aspect of exchange students.
       On Wednesday evening there was an lecture about the event. It was in Swedish but Ada and Minerva had been translating the most important parts to us ( Thank you !!!).We may have been disadvantaged during the lecture but on the other hand not understanding of Swedish was an asset during the next day. At least at Pathfinder / Guide roles, since we were not supposed to understand what were the youngsters talking about, we've had it a lot easier. Although the gaps between the roles had been about 1,5 hour the day went by quite fast. I think it was a great experience both for us and for the kids. When I've been talking with Veronika we both agreed that this is a great way to show young people the difficult situation on the refugees and that we could and should try to realize this in Czech Republic.

CULTURE CRASH 5.6-7.6.2013!

5.6-7.6 är det dags för Culture Crash i Raseborg.
Evenemanget riktar sig till ungdomar i 13 års ålder uppåt och är i workshopsformat.
Det går ut på att ungdomarna väljer en workshop som de jobbar intensivt med i 3 dagars tid som dras av  professionella handledare som har anknytning till Raseborg.
Deltagaravgiften för detta evenemang kommer att vara 30 euro/pers. Där ingår Lunch alla tre dagar, busstransport från Karis-Ekenäs och tillbaka alla evenemangs dagar och eventuellt en t-skjorta med evenemangets logo på. Under Fredag kvällen kommer vi att avsluta hela evenemanget med en Fest där deltagarna får visa upp vad de lärt sig och umgås tillsammans.
Projektgruppen består av Ian Granström från Anl. Noving, Elin Sundell från team React och vi samarbetar även med olika ungdomsorganisationer och kulturarbetare från Raseborg.

Vår samarbetsgrupp består av Anna Packalén, Otto Metsämäki,
Melinda Lönnberg, Sara Avdi och Andreas Kåll.
Vi samarbetar även med Raseborgs ungdomsfullmäktige och kulturbyrån i Raseborg.

Vi erbjuder olika workshops för deltagarna
Bland annat:

Capoeira
Beatbox
Konst
Hantverk
Bänd/Sång 
Parkour
Dj
Foto
Poetry slam

 Vi ordnar detta evenemang för att erbjuda ungdomar i Raseborg ett tillfälle att testa på olika aktiviteter som inte är så kända bland de unga i kommunen just nu. Även att synliggöra den kunskap och de kompetenser som våra workshop dragare har.Vi har även en vision av att ordna detta projekt som ett kontinuerligt evenemang i kommunen. Vi tycker att det är viktigt att satsa på verksamhet för ungdomarna i vår kommun.

Vi håller som bäst på att pussla ihop ett program som lockar så många ungdomar som möjligt och har även fullt upp med marknadsföringen och kontaktar eventuella sponsorer för detta projekt.

Kontakta oss gärna ifall ni har eventuella frågor eller ideér.
Vi tar emot alla idéer och hjälp vi får.

<3,
Sofia Haglund
Projektledare 

WAR Novia, Roparnäs

Hello guys,

The title WAR, is not a war between the campuses in Novia, no. It is for Week Against Racism. 

A little about the week itself. Ofcourse as the name says, it's against racism and this week is mostly noticed by Red Cross. So our team wanted to make projects during this week, to make a point about it - about what racism and what discrimination is and also make it a yearly event. There are many in our team that are going to do projects around the subject this week, but you can read about that week 12, when the week falls on :)

I wanted to cooperate with the campus in Roparnäs. I know that they are speaking English there, since the Nursing students are a multicultural group, with students from Africa, Asia and actually not that many from Finland.

Brainstorming to the project

The project group- Minerva, Julia, Veronika and Martin and me, had a brainstorming about it and decided that the project's content will be communication, human rights and project work and teambuilding :)


They are having a course in Project work and teambuilding in their studies, so what could be better than us teaching them, since it's our daily studies. They are doing their project to the International Nurses day, in May and we are going to work as their coaches.

We will go there week 13, Monday and Tuesday. And as a jackpot, we're also going to Korsholms gymnasium at Wednesday and have a workshop with them about communication and human rights :) 

I am happy for this project and I am lucky to have this project group with me, and I am greatful to be a part of Noving.

Have a nice week
julle

MEU mingel!

Hejssan!

(Kort uppdatering på svenska:)

Ronja Roms presenterar sitt arbete som ungdomssekreterare i Pargas kommun

I dag har Noving minglat! MEU r.f., vår ämnesförening, ordnade nämligen ett tillfälle för alla team och  alumner att presentera sig själv och lära känna varandra - ett s.k. Meumingel. Konceptet är helt nytt och ordnades för första gången denna förmiddag. Resultatet var lyckat och för mig var det verkligen givande och inspirerande att höra om vilken mångfald av möjligheter som väntar oss ute i arbetslivet!  Ungdomssekreterare i Pargas, pedagogisk handledare i Folkhälsans eftisverksamhet, projektarbetare i diverse olika projekt och en som arbetar på barnhem - våra alumner har alla valt sin egen väg och är praktexempel på hur bred arbetsbild en samhällspedagog har. I slutändan handlar det bara om att målmedvetet plöja sig fram och varje dag bevisa för arbetsmarknaden att det är just en samhällspedagog de behöver, med alla de kompetenser som gör just oss unika. 

Julle och Ninnu presenterar Noving! <3

Noving önskar er alla ett skönt veckoslut! Ta det lugnt, samla krafter och var beredda på att få höra om en fartfylld kommande vecka i Pargas!


xoxo

Ada

What brought us this week

Hello everyone,

My name is Veronika and I´m from Czech Republic. I am an exchange student in Novia, University of Applied Sciences. .

I study Social education and Leisure at Masaryk University in Brno. So the content of the study is very similar study of Noving team.

Why I decided to come to Finland?

At first it was a rash decision. I never liked winter, snow and frost. But I wanted to try something new and Finland for me was something absolutely unknown. So I said to myself, why not exactly Finland? And now, I am here :)

Of course, I did not expect that I would love to be here so much. But it happened. And I'm really grateful for this opportunity to be here. With a clear conscience I can say that this study program is one of my most beautiful moments in my life.

Speaking about the study. 

This week I was honored to be a Week Manger.

So now it is my duty as well as reward briefly inform you about the events of this week.

On Monday we started a new topic Integration, Refugees and Immigration. 

During the training, we had a very interesting and productive discussion.

On Tuesday we continued...... Ida from the Spark team has prepared for us really interesting workshop on the topic refugees and immigrants. 

Thursday morning we started with a visitor from the Åbo Akademi.

Steve has prepared for us workshop on the topic refugee law and International humanitarian law.

On this link you can look into the issue, which we have been involved with.

International refugee law - http://www.geneva-academy.ch/RULAC/international_refugee_law.php

International humanitarian law - http://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/other/what_is_ihl.pdf

During the whole week we had a lot of meetings for our projects and did a lot of work. Thus, we are on a very good way to realize these projects and I am very proud of our team.

I think this week can be considered very successful and beneficial for all of us.

So...... have a nice weekend :)

Sincerely and with smile, 

your Veronika 

International project in Inkoo

I'm giving you a short description about the project that's going to take place between 6-8.9.2013.

Nordic countries including Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark have so called twin towns with Inkoo and every year this event takes place in a different country.

What is the event then?

 Each twin town gets to design an over-weekend event where youngsters between 13-18 years old can participate in all the different activities the twin town has to offer.

What's my job in all this?

I was selected project leader for the whole project by the group of people representing Inkoo town. We are totally a group of five people that work on this project, all the others come from Inkoo town and I as a student from Novia.

 Inkoo harbour

At the moment we have four different packages from where the youngsters can select which event they most wan't to participate in. The packages are; shooting (paintball, air rifle) excercise (all kinds), adrenaline (containing rally etc) and a field day (fishing, survival type of thing). 

We have a meeting again tomorrow and hopefully we have confirmed more volunteers to help out during the weekend.

Over and out,

Max

A new world- a better world?

The opprtunity of a lifetime: pick whatever- and whoever you want to take with you, and create a continent of your own. You dont have to pay any attention of the old laws and rules.

In the new society I created, everyone's equal, no matter where you're from, what your ethnic background is. Water and air is clean. School is optional and learning happens by creating and innovating. Theres no money as a payment; instead we exchange food, clothes, books and other items. We grow our own food and can marry (IF it even excists a instituion of marriage) who ever we want. Only ones actions towards others have a meaning in defining wether you are a good person or not.      

Well, as you may allready have quessed, this is a hypotethical scene. Actually, it is a method out of a workshop that had refuge and human rights as a subject.
The idea behind it is to better understand, what goes on in peoples minds when they have to leave their homes and homecountries.
It is, in fact, something that we western people have a hard time imgeining at all. And on the other hand, that's just what we should be able to do in order to help others in need.
During this method excercise, we had the opportunity to choose the ten most important things we want to take with us. And that we did: we chose Coke and Hamburgers instead of democracy, warm clothes instead socialworkers. In a real situation, those we chose are not even options.

We are so used to comfortability, stability, peace and equality that I'm afraid we've lost a big part of  our empathy scills. How can we see the violations of human rights if all we have here is opporunities?

We, in the western countries are NOT responsible of other peoples crimes and violations, but we ARE responsible to take care of eachother. In fact i think that the right to solidarity and being helped when your in need, should be added to the UN convention human rights.

We talk a lot of marginalisation here in Finland allso. By opening our eyes first here in our own country, we could allso create a new kind of inner caring ability and willingnes.
Then maybe, just maybe, we did'nt have to create a whole new continent, but instead make this world a better one for all of us with small steps. Starting from You.

So why wait until tomorrow? Open your eyes today, and see that the grass seems no greener on the other side if you take care of your own.

With solidarity and optimism, Ninnu

Hello!

Much has happened since the semester started and Noving's been quite busy - we apologise for the long silence!

We kicked off the new year with a lot of zeal and immediately got down to business with a number of different projects. The Week against Racism (week 12) will be one of the highlights of this semester for us, and we've planned a lot of interesting activities that we'll reveal soon enough! Despite the fact that we've got a lot of stuff going on, we did have time to participate in the annual Clientweek (week 5), and even though we didn't win, we were all pretty proud over our accomplishment for the week. We contacted over 20 different clients, which was really stepping out of our comfort zone for us! So, the Clientweek was a success and sort of a milestone for us, because of the commitment of the team and the results it brought us.

Yesterday was also an interesting day for Noving. At 7 AM we climbed aboard a buss and started our journey towards Nakkila, where a mixed group of Teampreneurs from all over the world gathered to take part of the second-ever Friendleadership day, arranged by Tiimiakatemia Learning Network and Partus. There were participants from Novia, Proakatemia, and Tiimiakatemia Mondragon (Spain), as well as many exchange students. We worked the whole day in mixed, multiprofessional groups, first reflecting on the meaning of Friendleadership, and in the afternoon, taking part of a small birthgiving that resulted in a wide range of different kinds of presentations. It was fantastic to work with people from so many different cultures, and the biggest surprise for me was how alike our thoughts were. My group was on the same page from the beginning, and the discussions were easy and flowing. The task itself was perhaps a bit too easy, and it would've been nice to have more time to discuss the problems and possibilities all of us have encountered in this way of studying, but overall, the concept was fantastic. 

And oh - if you're wondering why the blog is suddenly in English, we have the honor of housing two exchange students from the Czech Republic in our team! So, Noving is speaking English the whole semester. Gotta love challenges.
I wish you all a terrific weekend, and we promise you'll hear from us soon again!
Hugs and kisses,
Ada.

Nytt år, Nya krafter

Nu har vi lämnat 2012 bakom oss och omfamnar det nya året med iver och spänning.
Det var 11 lite morgontröttna men ytterst glada och ivriga Noving-are som en efter en droppade in i klassrummet på måndagsmorgonen. Vi hade årets första träning och det kändes som igår som vi fick jullov. Nog var det skönt med jullov men nog var det också roligt att komma tillbaka och träffa alla härliga Noving-are igen.
Vi har börjat med helt ny struktur för våra studier på det sättet att vi har lagt upp ett schema för oss själva så att vi får så mycket gjort som möjligt. Det betyder att vi är de hela 8 timmarna i skolan varje dag och gör nästan allt tillsammans. Det är bra att sitta och skriva tillsammans med någon för då har man någon som kan hjälpa en eller ge råd då man slirar fast mitt i en bokessä eller något liknande. "Tillsammans är vi starka".

Vi har många nya utmaningar och omstruktureringar framför oss nu på vårterminen. Första utmaningen är att denna vecka ännu jobba på vår marknadsföring. Bloggen ska få ett litet annat utseende, likaså hemsidan. Visitkorten jobbas det också hårt med och de ska skickas in denna vecka för tryck.
En portfolio håller i skrivande stund också på att skapas. Där ska info om utförda projekt finnas så att det är lätt att visa sedan när vi går ut på kundbesök eller studiebesök.

Imorgon åker alla samhällspedagogteam (Noving, Spark & SP12) från Novia ut till en stuga för att brainstorma om vårens projekt. Ska bli riktigt roligt att få planera och utföra projekt tillsammans nu på våren. Får se vad vi hittar på!

Nästa vecka kommer dock kanske den största utmaningen att startas upp. Vi får två utbytesstudenter från Tjeckien med oss då och de ska stanna hela vårterminen. Då kommer alla träningar att gå på engelska och så också en del av projekten. Ska bli intressant att prata engelska hela våren. Kommer säkert att gå lite knaggligt i början men se så börjar det förhoppningsvis flyta på bättre!
Vi kommer att välkomna dem med öppna armar och det ska bli otroligt roligt att ha utomstående personer som kommer och studera med oss igen.

Nytt år, Nya krafter! 2013 here we come!

- Julia (Dalle)