And so to Finland

As the project leaders for the Disability Champions project Dave Parr and I were invited by the TUC to join their delegates to attending a conference at the metal workers union's college in Finland. This was to exchange good practice between the unions on employing disabled people and hopefully to build the role of the Champion into that of their “Competence Pilots”.

We took off from Stansted airport on Wednesday 14th of June in the afternoon and arrived approximately 9:30 p.m. local time in Finland at Tampere airport. We travelled to our destination by taxi, and about 45 kms. Later, we were welcomed at the Murikka Institute by our hostess, Auli, and staggered off to bed eagerly looking forward to next day's conference.

It was the first time that I have been abroad representing disabled people in the workplace and using an interpreter! It was really interesting to see the different perspective that disabled people have in Finland. They tend to concentrate on people who have a language difficulty, in particular, dyslexia. So we painted a broader picture, explaining how the Disability Champions project worked in workplaces supporting disabled people with a wide range of impairments to gain employment, using the schemes like Access to Work and passing on good practice. We explained that this website was the hub of our operations enabling people to keep in touch and to share ideas and solutions.

As you would expect, although it was very hard work! Our hosts had provided us with an evening of entertainment on the Thursday night! Sauna, birch twigs, and a cold Lake plus a barbecue and beer! What more could anyone want. It really was a lovely evening, enhanced by the midnight sun.

Next day we went to Tampere to visit several sites. I visited a workshop at Turjankatu were young people where given confidence and skills using art as a media of expression. Dave went to Etappi, a workshop upskilling long term unemployed people and preparing them to return to work. They have a website www.trety.org. My Finnish isn't what it used to be (!) but if you click on the link 'Työpajat' you will see some good pictures of the kind of activities that go on there.

The two groups met at lunchtime for our visit to TAKK, a training organisation for immigrants. This place was great, if not a model of accessibility I must add! The focus here is learning the Finnish language. We met with students who were training to become HGV lorry drivers. They came from many countries, our group all spoke very good English, although their first languages were many and varied. They all said that learning Finnish was very hard compared to other languages. TAKK's website is www.tak.fi. On this one you will find a link "In English" near the top that translates the whole site.

We had a few hours to kill before we took off on our flight so we sampled the delights of Tampere, where we were shown around and were lucky enough to see a display of traditional dancing, and the local market.

All in all, we learnt a great deal about the Finnish perspective and hopefully passed on some of our practices that they will like to take up although we were very tired and weary by the time we finally arrived back in London at about 12:30 a.m.

Kiitos Suomi! (thank you Finland)

Margie Woodward.
Project Worker, Disability Champions. 23 June 2006