I got here just this morning after traveling
by night train all the way from Turku to Rovaniemi. I didn’t get that much of
sleep, but I woke up quite fresh and looking forward for the first lecture day.
I had been quite exited to participate in the International Summer School for the
global social issues and for new friends from all over the world to share my
thoughts and experiences in social work.
At the campus, it was obvious that there was
something special to begin. You could sense the atmosphere and hear people
talking in English or in other languages. It’s is not that usual to have
someone passing by and smile back at you in Finland. Not to mention them all
saying “Hello” or “Hi!” to you as well.
I believe we all, as the future social workers, have a big and loving
heart and it’s easy to contact to a stranger. But, I could definitely adjust to
this kind of gesture.
So, the Welcoming speakers, Liisa Hokkanen from
the University of Lapland, Finland and Professor Stanley L. Witkin from the
University of Vermont, USA, made us all warmly welcome and we had some good
moments while getting introduced with the Finnish ways of life and mostly about
the secrets behind the happiness of Finnish people. It was also interesting to
know how we all were a part of a tradition that has now been going on for 19
years.
There is a story behind International Summer
School project. Before the International
Summer School officially started, Kyösti Urponen – now the co-founder of the
International Summer School and Professor Emeritus in the University of
Lapland, Finland - had asked Stanley to
come to Finland and have a lecture done in University of Lapland. Stanly
accepted the invitation without knowing that Kyösti would ask him again the
next year and year after that, and so on. Somehow the participants in Stanleys
lectures were each year more and more foreigners, coming from different parts
of the world. The idea of the International Summer School was born during these
years.
The rest of this project we all know. It was
clear that this way as we connect in International Summer School we will have
more perspective for our future careers in the social field. Stanley outlined
how important it is for all of us to get together and have personal
relationships with people from different countries, so that a country would
have a face instead of just being a foreign land you sometimes hear news about.
For me, the first day was very nice experience
and it seems obvious already how appreciative this is to be part of the
International Summer School and how worthwhile this week will be for my future
as a social worker. We all are here to
get multiple perspectives by sharing thoughts and experiences and having
different points of view for different issues that we might have taken for
granted before and getting visible things that have been invisible or unseen.
At the end, perspectives can be different, but none one of them is the Truth.
Tanja Sarkonsalo, Social Work student, University of Lapland, Finland
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti