{"id":25763,"date":"2023-02-15T10:30:48","date_gmt":"2023-02-15T10:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rauhankasvatus.fi\/staging\/?p=25763"},"modified":"2023-08-18T09:45:04","modified_gmt":"2023-08-18T09:45:04","slug":"story-of-oulu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rauhankasvatus.fi\/staging\/connect-oulu\/","title":{"rendered":"Story of Oulu"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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From Misunderstanding to Trust<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Story of Oulu, Finland<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cThe teachers at our school are racist. They treat us differently than others.They say that we immigrants are aggressive, we don’t listen and we don’t understand. That we are violent and don’t know how to behave, like Finnish children. I am also Finnish. I was born in Finland. But they treat me like I’m an outsider. They ask me all the time if I can speak Finnish. No one believes, not even our parents, that we can achieve anything in life.\u201d –<\/i><\/b>H<\/i>igh school student from Oulu<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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These kinds of stories <\/span>Faiza Abdulqadir, 27,<\/i><\/b>\u00a0started to hear around 2019. <\/span><\/p>

She moved to Finland in 2015, and after spending a few years in a smaller city in the north, she decided to relocate herself to Oulu, a city of 210 000 inhabitants in the northern shore of the Gulf of Bothnia.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Faiza quickly became a very active and well-connected member of the immigrant community in Oulu. Among her various commitments in the city were youth work studies, municipal election candidate campaigning, dance class organization, homework club for immigrant background children and youth, and work as a school assistant for Somali background children. In her everyday life she talked, and still does talk, with many people \u2013 and people talked to her. <\/span>
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<\/span>As time passed, the stories started to pile up. She heard perspectives from teachers, who were struggling to understand what was going on in their classes with some of the students, and stories of immigrant background parents, who were saying for example: \u201cWe don’t call them [the officials] child protection. We call them ”the people who steal our children.”, and started to wonder, what was true, as the stories were so different from each other.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cAs I\u2019m also an immigrant, we talk a lot and share things together. We share the problems, and often there\u2019s something about the teachers and about the school with their kids or youth.\u201d <\/span><\/i>Faiza explains,<\/span> \u201cI have also worked in the schools and I\u2019ve seen how the teachers are working. And not all of them are mistrusting the immigrant background youth. There I realized that the people just don\u2019t understand each other. And I was wondering, why people [immigrants] are feeling scared even when they stay in a safe country?\u201d<\/span><\/i>
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We want to discuss trust in the society<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Around the same time she met with <\/span>Anna Litewka-Anttolainen<\/i><\/b>, also an active member of the migrant community and training officer in Peace Education Institute Finland (RKI), as well as <\/span>Sari Lahdenper\u00e4<\/i><\/b>, who works as a <\/span>Multicultural Youth Work Coordinator for the city of Oulu. <\/span>They started to collaborate in other projects, but it wasn\u2019t until the early summer of 2022 and the first training of the Connect -project, when they were able to define what was the main cause for all of the misunderstanding and rumors, that Faiza heard around her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThe problem we want to solve in Oulu is the disconnection and mistrust between people. As immigrants, people are often afraid, because they don\u2019t trust the system. They are afraid that maybe social workers or the police are intervening in their lives. They are afraid to say what they want to say, or what they are thinking of. Some of us don\u2019t even know that you are free to say what you need to say. I know the situation especially in the somali community of Oulu, as I’m one of them.\u201c <\/span><\/i>Faiza explains.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cWe want to discuss trust in the society\u201d <\/span><\/i>Anna continues<\/span>, \u201cWhat interests us, is what happens when there is no trust and how it affects young people, the school world, teachers and ultimately Oulu as a whole. And how the lack of trust affects safety in society. Our goal is to understand how we can create change and start implementing it.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>

Faiza, Anna and Sari are especially concerned about the youth, as many of them live between two cultures and try to make sense of themselves and the society around them in a situation, which is not always very supportive. <\/span>
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\u201cI\u2019ve been with the youth in the evening times as a youth worker, and they have told me many of their problems. They feel that nobody understands them. They might be lost between the languages. They don\u2019t have good Finnish, but they don\u2019t either have a good mother tongue and they are just living in the English world. When I found this out, I realized, these people need connection.\u201d <\/span><\/i>Faiza says, and continues<\/span>, <\/span><\/i>\u201c<\/span>We are losing some young boys. They are under aged and some of them are getting into troubles.”<\/span><\/i><\/p>

There are many cases, when there’s been a fight between the children or youth from immgrant background in the schools, and teachers have been calling a school police to handle the situation, as the teachers can’t use any physical force in the school. Many of the youth or their parents don’t really understand, why this has happened and there’s rarely an interpret who could explain the situation for all of the parties involved. When many of the parents might not be well integrated into Finnish society, they might not know the language or the customs or trust authorities, these kind of incidents create more mistrust than solve anything.

Faiza continues: ”The first generation immigrants, especially those with a refugee background, can have very traumatic experiences in their lives and it’s very hard to trust others. When something bad or shocking happens, many will also contact their own peer group, for example other somali mothers, who might live in different counries of Europe and this again exelarates the cycle of mistrust, as nobody really understands what happened and why.”<\/i><\/span><\/p>

The situation is complicated, as there seems not to be common ground with the youth, their parents, schools and other officials. Anna gives an example of this: <\/span>\u201cIt is often thought that when young Finns are together, it is just a group of friends, but when young people with an immigrant background are together, we talk about gangs. The root causes of these are certainly lack of trust, prejudice and racism. And lack of support and information.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>

Sari adds a youth worker\u2019s perspective: \u201cWhen people understand each other’s points of view, we can better begin to understand each other and through that we are better able to be present in the lives of young people. There are more safe adults involved and if there\u2019s trust, we are able to influence even big things.\u201d<\/i>
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How to start building trust?<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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When Faiza, Anna and Sari were able to define the problem, they started to work on their theory of change. What kind of change they\u2019d like to see in the society, how to achieve this and with who? <\/span>
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<\/span>They\u2019d all like to see Oulu, where all the people could truly trust each other, as well as officials and institutions, and where there would be space for honest dialogue. Dialogue is crucial, as people don\u2019t seem to understand other people\u2019s perspectives. As Sari puts it: \u201c<\/span>When we dare to trust, we also learn to see other people’s perspectives and understand them. People would also get an experience that they are understood. With the help of dialogue things could really move forward.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>

Understanding another person\u2019s perspective is not only important on a societal or community level. It is vital for individuals. \u201c<\/span>I hope that people can truly feel that they are staying in a safe country. Also in their hearts and in their minds. Not just to go to school, eat and have permission to stay and have a mentality of being scared and thinking a hundred times before you can talk. Thinking, if I say this, will they get me wrong? So mentally safe, safe in the heart and physically safe.\u201d <\/span><\/i>Faiza adds.<\/span><\/p>

As the question is complex, they also understood that they needed to get all of the parties involved into the process: immigrant background youth, their parents, teachers, youth workers and officials.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A theory of Change in Oulu<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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  • At the moment there’s no trust in Oulu between different groups of people, youth, schools and officials, and this is causing a lot of damage especially for people with immigrant backgrounds.<\/li>
  • If there would be more trust between different groups of people, it would
    • be easier to ask and offer help when needed.<\/li>
    • reduce the harmful cycle of rumors and misunderstanding<\/li>
    • reduce the number of\u00a0 immigrant background youth and children, who fall outside of the society’s safety net<\/li>
    • reduce the harmful impact of the segregation\u00a0<\/li><\/ul><\/li>
    • In order to create trust, people (immigrant background youth, parents, teachers, youtworkers and officials) need to meet and have meaningful dialogue with each other.<\/li>
    • To achieve this, it’s necessary to bring people together to discuss difficult subjects.\u00a0<\/li>
    • In order to get people to talk, it’s necessary to create safe space for everybody and give people personal invitations. To reach this, it can be a good idea to talk each group separately and only in the end, bring everybody together.<\/li><\/ul>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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      Let's talk about trust<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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      After creating their theory of change, they started to design the process. They understood very early on that they needed to put much effort into inviting people and make it personal. As Faiza is a well connected member of the immigrant society, she knew that she could reach the parents quite easily. Sari could also get the municipal youth department in but the big question was: how to get the youth, officials and schools involved? <\/span>
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      <\/span>The issues they wanted to address in the process were extremely delicate, and when done wrongly, they could cause immense harm and make the situation even worse. It required quite a lot of personal contacting and discussion to get the school involved, but they managed to persuade the principal of <\/span>one school in Oulu that the process would be worth the risk and expected the youth to follow the invitation coming from Faiza, the school and the youth work department of Oulu.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

      They also assumed that it would be better to talk to each group separately first. In the end, their aim was to get people to sincerely talk with each other and make the different perspectives and points of views visible, so people could start to understand each other better. In smaller groups, there would be more space for each person, and more time to discuss about sore spots of each individual and group, as well as to define the crucial questions and misunderstandings of each group in relation to others.<\/span><\/p>

      As in every process in the Connect project, also Oulu wanted to use stories as discussion openers. Unlike the other groups, who used video, they wanted to use written story cards from different perspectives that Faiza had collected over the time. But they brought the voice of why this was important, in a format of a video into the room.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

      The written stories that they used were collected from different people and put together in a way that people couldn\u2019t recognise persons behind them. This was important as Oulu is quite a small place, and one of the things they wanted to impact was false rumours going around the city. There was one story from an immigrant background girl\u2019s perspective, one story from a teacher’s perspective and one story from an immigrant background mother\u2019s perspective. After each story card, they presented an image of different actors and their positions in a story and asked a series of questions for discussion openers.<\/span><\/p>

      The idea was to start with one school, where there’s pupils from immigrant backgrounds (especially Somalis, with who Faiza has good relations) and identified mistrust between them, school, authorities and parents, and then continue with other schools in the city, if the model would prove to be efficient or succesfull.
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      Girl's story<\/div>
      In our school teachers are racist.\nThey treat us differently than the others.\nThey are saying that we, immigrants, are aggressive, that we do not listen nor understand, that we are showing power and that we can\u2019t behave as Finnish kids. I am Finnish too. I was born in Finland. But they treat me as an outsider. They ask me all the time, if I can speak Finnish language. No one, even our parents believe that we can achieve something in our lives. \nBut they don\u2019t treat all kids the same way.\nWith us they are making big deal out of small things. They can not even want to talk to our parents, as they do with non-migrant pupils. With us they immediately call the police.\nIf they think I don\u2019t belong to the society, how do they expect me to believe and respect them?\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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      Teacher's story<\/div>
      We realized that one boy from our school was not well. He was sad, angry and his grades had dropped. We tried to help, talk to him but it didn\u2019t help. \nOne day the boy got into a fight with one girl from our school. We found out, that the source of this conflict between the kids lied within the families. We couldn\u2019t understand what was the problem. We didn\u2019t find any other solution, so we called the police for help.\nWe ordered an interpreter to assure effective communication between parents, teachers and the police.\nWe did everything we could, but the boy\u2019s parents didn\u2019t want to talk with us, they didn\u2019t want to solve the problem with us. \n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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      Mother's story<\/div>
      We don\u2019t call them the Child Welfare. We call them: \u201cthe people who steal our kids\u201d.\nI am an immigrant mother. Someone wrote about me to social workers, that I am not a good mother, because some things my kids are doing. Someone just called them and told things about me that are not true. They believed and have been checking up on me.\nEveryone says that they will take my children from me. \nHow can I talk openly with teachers about my and my kid's life? They wouldn\u2019t understand me anyway and call the police. I am afraid to ask for help. I would rather stay quiet than explain my problems to people who will never understand me.\nMany mothers like me need help with their kids but if we talk to teachers, school will call police and the Child Welfare, for nothing. We can\u2019t talk openly; we can\u2019t trust them.\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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      Mother's story<\/div>
      We don\u2019t call them the Child Welfare. We call them: \u201cthe people who steal our kids\u201d.\nI am an immigrant mother. Someone wrote about me to social workers, that I am not a good mother, because some things my kids are doing. Someone just called them and told things about me that are not true. They believed and have been checking up on me.\nEveryone says that they will take my children from me. \nHow can I talk openly with teachers about my and my kid's life? They wouldn\u2019t understand me anyway and call the police. I am afraid to ask for help. I would rather stay quiet than explain my problems to people who will never understand me.\nMany mothers like me need help with their kids but if we talk to teachers, school will call police and the Child Welfare, for nothing. We can\u2019t talk openly; we can\u2019t trust them.\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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      Questions<\/div>
      Do you recognize this situation? Does it feel familiar? \nDo you have your own experiences? Do you have any positive experiences?\nHow can we make a change?\n\nBetween whom there is distrust?\nBetween whom there is trust?\nWhat kind of assumptions different people have done?\nWhat kind of feelings different actors have in the situation?\nWhy do you think this is happening?\nWhat do you think is the reason for that?\nHow does it affect the power dynamics and roles in family?\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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      Questions<\/div>
      Do you recognize this situation? Does it feel familiar? \nDo you have your own experiences? Do you have any positive experiences?\nHow can we make a change?\n\nBetween whom there is distrust?\nBetween whom there is trust?\nWhat kind of assumptions different people have done?\nWhat kind of feelings different actors have in the situation?\nWhy do you think this is happening?\nWhat do you think is the reason for that?\nHow does it affect the power dynamics and roles in family?\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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