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.