Moik­ka – a word of great sig­nif­i­cance

Oulu and Fin­land are becom­ing more inter­na­tion­al, whether one likes it or not. Oulu attracts inter­na­tion­al stu­dents, employ­ees and their spous­es by means of excel­lent edu­ca­tion­al estab­lish­ments, high-tech busi­ness­es and good ser­vices.

A num­ber of these com­pe­tent peo­ple have said that they do have friends and acquain­tances, but, quite often, the acquain­tances tend to be oth­er immi­grants – even with the same nation­al­i­ty to theirs.

Peo­ple who study or work here can cer­tain­ly become root­ed in Oulu once they find friends and net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in terms of every­day work. How­ev­er, it is the spous­es of these peo­ple that are in a key posi­tion: quite a num­ber of those com­ing to work or study in Oulu also bring their spouse or fam­i­lies with them.

In case the spouse has no con­tact peo­ple, friends or just some­one to exchange a few words with here, it is very like­ly that the fam­i­ly begins to con­sid­er oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties besides Oulu at some point. For it is a fact well-known that if all is well at home, oth­er mat­ters are eas­i­er to cope with as well.

The fact that Oulu attracts inter­na­tion­al, tal­ent­ed peo­ple is won­der­ful. Yet, we should remem­ber there is a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of active, skilled and hard-work­ing peo­ple already liv­ing here, many of whom wish for a sense of feel­ing at home in Oulu. There­fore, it is up to us all to give them a chance to inte­grate into our soci­ety.

How can some­one born in Oulu (‘pal­i­jas­jalaka­nen’ in the local dialect) or some­one who has moved here help in all this? Eas­i­ly.

You can go and say ‘Moik­ka!’ to an immi­grant in your neigh­bour­hood and have a lit­tle chat with them. Or per­haps there is an immi­grant work­ing or doing intern­ship at your work? Go and meet them over a cof­fee break to show you are inter­est­ed in find­ing out who they are.

It is wise of you to give them a chance to speak Finnish instead of con­tin­u­ing the con­ver­sa­tion in Eng­lish. It is only nat­ur­al that not every­one speaks Finnish yet, but there are many who would very much like to do so, if only giv­en that pos­si­bil­i­ty.

There are plen­ty of leisure time activ­i­ties organ­ised in the city that pro­vide every­one with an easy way to meet new peo­ple from oth­er coun­tries.

For exam­ple, we at Inter­na­tion­al House Oulu organ­ise events focus­ing on net­work­ing and board games on a month­ly basis – a good exam­ple of help­ing peo­ple who have moved to Oulu in find­ing new acquain­tances and rea­sons to inte­grate into our soci­ety. It has been nice to see that also peo­ple that are res­i­dents of Oulu by birth have found these events, but there’s always room for new peo­ple.

”A mod­est doing may make a big dif­fer­ence.”

If you are, now, after read­ing this arti­cle, inter­est­ed in help­ing those that have immi­grat­ed to Oulu, there are many ways you can help in a more long-term man­ner. For exam­ple, by sign­ing up as a men­tor in your field of skills/expertise in terms of the men­tor­ing pro­gramme of the mul­ti­cul­tur­al cen­tre Vil­la Vic­tor, or by join­ing in the Kum­mi Fam­i­ly Pro­gramme organ­ised by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu.

Oulu and the whole world con­sist of var­i­ous encoun­ters between peo­ple. A mod­est doing may make a big dif­fer­ence – some­times even change the course of someone’s life.

Riku­pekka Leinonen is work­ing as a Coor­di­na­tor at Inter­na­tion­al House Oulu.

The orig­i­nal text was pub­lished on 18th Feb edi­tion of Forum24 in Finnish. Trans­lat­ed by Mar­jo Jus­si­la.