Rodrigo Gines and Ahmed Lakra represented Vierasjoukkue at a recent seminar in Punkulaidun, a small rural municipality around an hours' drive away from Tampere. The seminar, entitled 'Immigrants as a strength of the countryside', aimed to find ways in which immigrants can be successfully integrated into rural communities.

Finland's countryside is facing a demographic challenge, as internal migration to the bigger cities gathers pace. Immigrants could potentially play a role in breathing new life into rural Finland, but their arrival presents opportunities and challenges that rural communities may not be familiar with.

Vierasjoukkue's presentation showed how the club has helped promote the integration of foreigners and New Finns into Finnish society. Acting as a gateway for people to become more active in Finnish society, and to learn more about different cultures.

”The seminar was fascinating – I never knew so much help was available for immigrants wanting to move to rural areas!” said Rodrigo. ”There's a serious point here, that information about all the sources of help is not widely available, and better knowledge can assist immigrants in getting the help that is available to them.”

”We had a good response from those present, there was a fair amount of interest in Vierasjoukkue from the participants,” continued Rodrigo. ”Our club was started as a grassroots initiative to assist integration, which is the best way to deal with these issues – bottom-up rather than top-down.”

The seminar was organised by LAG Joutsenten Reitti, a development organisation established by the municipalities of Huittinen, Sastamala, Hämeenkyro and Punkulaidun. The organisation's mission is to improve the quality of living in the countryside by financing grass-roots projects, and they see immigrants as a vital resource for future development.

”Sometimes rural municipalities don't realise this, but there are actually a lot of New Finns in rural areas – the highest percentage is in Närpes, on the west coast, which has more foreign-born residents than Helsinki, Turku or Tampere,” said Joutsenten Reitti's managing Director Petri Rinne.

”I was very glad to have an initiative started by New Finns themselves represented at the seminar,” continued Rinne. ”Vierasjoukkue is a very good self-started project, which is much more effective than many of the very top-down integration projects that seem to predominate in Finland but have difficulty actually reaching their target audience.”

Further information from Petri Rinne, tel: 040 555 3232, and Rodrigo Gines, tel: 044 082 0432[