Our project aims to start opening up The Alzheimer Society of Finland to culturally sensitive memory work. Equally we aim to recruit and train migrant volunteers to help spread information on dementia prevention in their own communities. Here we recount two challenges in our work but also a success story.
Finnish land levels rise faster than sea levels (about 1cm/year on average). This is due to something called the post-glacial uplift. Land masses that were depressed by the huge weight of ice sheets during the last ice age are now rising. It is fair to say that our project at times also has elements of a glacial uplift.
Building up support services involving migrant volunteers in a thinly populated country
Finland has the third lowest population density in Europe with 18 inhabitants/km2. This is falling to as little as 2 inhabitants/km2 in the Finnish North. The European population average is 109. Outside the capital area Helsinki many regions are only thinly populated. This presents many challenges but also makes it hard to reach a critical mass of volunteers in a specific language. Like many small nations, Finland is often very focused on its capital region.
Out of an overall population of 5,5 million, about 550,000 people are of migrant background. Of these about 26,000 are over the age of 65 and these are again dispersed all over Finland. Regional compositions of migrant populations can differ a lot, explained e.g. by proximity to the Russian border (1,300 km). These geographic differences make it hard to develop one volunteer model that could be successfully applied to every regional office of The Alzheimer Society. Thus, great adaptability of professionals is key towards finding, training and coordinating migrant volunteers. There is no one model that will work everywhere. Of all the migrant volunteers we have in our project, those that show self-initiative and get to “create their own volunteer tasks” appear to enjoy being a volunteer most.
External environment
To state the obvious: Building up trust takes time and demonstrated reliability over longer periods of time. It is a gradual process involving commitment to a purpose or group. Some of our immigrant clients, individuals or whole organizations, are only agreeing after two years to start cooperation, after we consistently demonstrated a genuine willingness to help. However, this clashes directly with the average three years project financing in Finland. The project clock is ticking down. In addition, major changes in Finnish regional and federal funding create much insecurity. Savings are now the law of the land. Staff get laid off. On top of that, a generally suspicious political climate towards immigrants makes for a difficult working environment.
But on the upside: Signalling function
The Alzheimer Society of Finland and its 41 regional associations have so far limited experience with culturally sensitive memory work. Our project has involved a lot of groundwork and network building. In many ways the Alzheimer Society internally is our most important client. Changing attitudes, opening up to migrants, encouraging self-reflection, and avoiding navel-gazing are long-term goals. Yet, our project has been able to kick-start discussions and cemented the management’s understanding, that clients with migrant background will only increase in numbers in the future. Especially, we are pleased that various regional society members have adopted migrant volunteers. After all, it is from the ground up that lasting change will need to happen. The Alzheimer Society of Finland has adopted culturally sensitive work into its new strategy. We interpret this as an important signalling function also to our 41-member associations. So, for all the challenges involved, we are going very optimistically into our final project year 2025. The glacial uplift is slow, but it is happening.
Ida Mitchell and Sven Claes work at The Alzheimer Society of Finland in the 3-year project Muistiopas (Memory Guide) 2023-2025.
Ida and Sven are both ENIEC members.
