Tuesday’s theme was politics. The goal of the day was to get acquainted with the diversity of the Finnish political field. The day started by meeting people who work in organizations that try to influence politics and decision makers in fields they find inportant. All of these organizations get most of their funding from the government.
The day started at Lapinrinne, where Tsinghua University Student Union (SUTU) and AYY met with the National Union of University Students in Finland (SYL). SYL works in a national level to endorse student’s rights and to collect all student unions to one strong fort. Lauri Lehtoruusu, a former SYL board member, told us a little about what SYL does and how their work differs from a student union’s.
Next up was SETA Ry and their chairperson Panu Mäenpää, who introduced us to their work in making society equal for everyone regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. Seta has done diverse work on LGBTI advocacy for over 40 years. They have established The Trans Support Center, started the citicenz initiative for the equal marridge law and have advanced equality in Finland in many other ways. We had a very fruitful conversation about the situatuion of LGBTI people in Finland and in China and agreed that there’s still a lot to do but progress is made, however slowly.
SUTU, AYY and SETA Ry chair-person Panu Mäenpää in Lapinrinne
SUTU and AYY visited The Finnish Nature League (Luonto-liitto) where Sami Säynevirta inroduced us the protection and preservation work they do. The Nature League is an organization for children, youth and young adults that take a stand on the protection of nature, animals, water system, climate and energy issues. They also do environmental education in the form of courses, guidebooks, camps and clubs. Sami told us about their current important issues and especially the situation of wolves in Finland got a conversation going.
SUTU and AYY at the Little Parliament meeting with speaker Maria Lohela
After lunch we headed to the Little Parliament house where we were to meet Maria Lohela, the Speaker of the Parliament. She told us about her work as a speaker and a little about the everyday work politicians do in the parliament. Everybody also got to ask Lohela questions about the Parliament and Finnish politics overall. This meeting was very interesting for our visitors, for ourselves and for the Speaker herself.
In the evening we had something special planned. We had arranged a panel discussion with the youth organizations of the political parties to further show the diversity of Finnish politics to our guests. We also decided that to make the event open for everybody. A lot of international students showed up and were eager to learn about the Finnish political system. Unfortunately not all the political parties could attend but 5 out of 8 of those who have a place in the parliament were at least there.