by Sari Heikinnen
At the beginning of August I started as a project manager in FinJap-project in Finland at Laurea University of Applied Sciences. FinJap –project is coordinated by Laurea UAS and partners are TFU Tohoku Fukushi University in Sendai Japan and HAMK Häme University of Applied Sciences. Also other partners, like local service providers (public, private and NGOs are involved). FinJap is a pilot project which aim is to view how elderly care systems work in Japan and Finland and how they sustain wellbeing of elderly people. The main idea of that student centered FinJap –project is to learn from each other about the most meaningful issues that are related to ageing society in the situation of very fast growing elderly population, concentrating on those services that support older people to live at home as long as possible. Aim is also to create a business case study on how the public/private funded social service providers (private companies & public sector) are working and how they are funded. The main target group are students and teachers who will participate to the FinJap project, 12 Finnish and 6 Japanese students are included in the project as well as 3 teachers from Finnish Universities and 3 teachers from Tohoku Fukushi University. By offering new kinds of opportunities for interaction and co-operation increase students´ social capital. FinJap promotes the understanding of culture between Finland and Japan and encourages students and staff members to increase different kind of cooperation and interaction between Finns and Japanese which is creative tool in social change.
So, we are leaving to Sendai on November with a group of students, and I’m so excited already! If anyone from ENIEC has good advices or other information concerning Sendai, Tohoku Fukushi University, Japan (I visited there in spring 2017) I’m happy to hear.
