Youth issues in the spotlight

Although the historic amusement park Linnanmäki in the middle of Helsinki has now closed for the autumn, the gates were opened for 150 people from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Åland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands between 26 and 28 September.

Half of this group was made up of young people, and the other half were adults who have influence over policies relating to the labour market, society, education, and culture. They worked together arduously over these two days – and took a ride on the roller coaster too, of course.

Raise awareness of the problems!

“They should find policy-based solutions to some of the challenges facing many young people in the Nordic Region today – difficulties in finding work, growing youth poverty, mental illness.

The Nordic countries would do well to start by developing useful and comparable statistics showing the extent of youth poverty,” says Emilie Weski of the Nordic Youth Association.

“Young people are invisible in poverty statistics,” she continues. 

“Policy-based measures can only be implemented once we can see the link between how long young people have to study and their subsequent late entry into the labour market, and poverty among people aged between 18 and 25.

Another useful starting point would be to stop defining people based on their gender.”

Get rid of the gender box

“Adults speak in terms of ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ all too frequently. All children and young people have a right not to have to choose between two boxes and instead be treated as people,” says Hedwig Spindler, a LGBTQ activist from Stockholm.  

Dag Henrik Nygårds, a law student from Bergen, thinks that there should be better opportunities to work and study concurrently, and that this would help those young people who fall into the trap of being too inexperienced for their first job.

“More workplaces should have student employees. Then fewer newly qualified lawyers would end up having to sell ice cream,” he says.

One of the working groups looked at how culture can be more open both to young people and to immigrants who have recently arrived from other countries.

Welfare in the future?

The idea behind the conference was to engage socially-minded young people more closely in Nordic co-operation. This is not only because the Nordic Council of Ministers has developed a strategy for how the perspectives and rights of young people should permeate through political co-operation, but also to let young people make more of a contribution to the Norden 2020 project, which looks at the future of the Nordic welfare states.

The findings of the conference’s six working groups was documented and passed on to the Nordic Council of Ministers.

The initiator of the conference was the Nordic Committee for Children and Young People, NORDBUK, whose chairperson Laura Ollilla was clearly impressed after the event:

“The conference has been both intense and rewarding, addressing several major issues in a short space of time My conclusion is that young people in the Nordic Region face such similar challenges that it would be foolish not to work together in finding solutions,” Ollila says.

Conference facts:

The conference is the Nordic Committee for Children and Young People’s, NORDBUK’s, foremost event this year. (NORDBUK is the advisory and co-ordinating body for all issues relating to children and young people in the Nordic Council of Ministers).

The conference also forms part of the Finnish presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers and the three-year priority project Norden 2020 (An open and innovative Nordic Region with well-off people in 2020 – equal opportunities for welfare, education, culture, and work).

The ‘Bridges’ conference is being arranged by Hanasaari – a cultural centre for Sweden and Finland – in co-operation with NORDBUK, the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, the Finnish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, Nuora, the Finnish Youth Cooperation – Allianssi, Nordic Culture Point, the Kohtaamo project, the Youth Research Network, Humak University of Applied Sciences, NCoE JustEd, the Nordic Centre for Welfare and Social Issues, and the Finnish Regional State Administrative Agencies.