Helsinki´s Director of Youth Affairs Tommi Laitio´s presentation on how good youth work promotes freedom.

1. Freedom as an
active state
- how Helsinki´s
youth work builds up
capabilities?
Tommi Laitio
Director of Youth Affairs
City of Helsinki
Citizens for Europe Seminar
28 May 2013

2. 595 000 residents
10-17yo: 41 000
13-17yo: 27 000
5 000 / age group

3. We re dealing with the first global
generation in Finland s history
Cross-border families
New notions of a family
Real experiences of discrimination
Tested capabilities for empathy and
negotiation
Diversity of world views
Generational experience of
constant competition
A lot more scared
Strong ethos of help
Strong ethos of fairness
Strong trust in institutions

4. The Youth Department supports youth in
becoming active citizens.
Activities are directed at all young people
in Helsinki, with the aim of encouraging
them to find the forms of activity and
recreational spaces that suite them best.
The Youth Department constantly updates
its working methods by monitoring youth
phenomena and changes in the living
conditions of young people.
Mission

5. (Ruudin päättäjämiitti /
Katri Riikonen NK)
90 locations
1 332 487 visits (2012)
770 hobby groups (2012)
10 257 members (2012)
1,3 m € in grants for NGOs (+rents)
400 professional youth workers
29,5m€

6. ”The capabilities approach starts from a
very simple question: what are people
really able to do and be? What real
possibilities do they have?”
- Martha Nussbaum: Creating Capabilities. The
Human Development Approach.

7. The Paradox of Youth Work
Integrate
Emancipate

8. Core
principles of
our work

9. 1. Default unit is a group

10. 2. Freedom to choose
has intrinsic value

11. Youth clubs as settlements
90 locations ranging from local youth
clubs to animal farms, repair shops and
skate parks.

12. 3. We focus on doing
concrete things.

13. Youth work is not a service.
Young people are not our customers.
Freedom, wellbeing and democracy
are all active states of being.
Freedom to, not only from
Democracy is a possibility to act, not a state
of affairs worth celebrating.
Wellbeing is built
in joint activities with others.
A Good Society Is A Society
of Action

14. 4. Society is made of
me and the others.

15. Political questions are far too serious
to be left for professionals.
- Hannah Arendt (Vita Activa)

16. Our goal in Ruuti (gunpowder), ruuti.net, is that in
the future all young people have annually an
experience of democracy.

17. Ruuti Budget: for the first time in Helsinki´s history
young people in two areas decide on our work and
spending for 2014.

18. Main daily writes on Ruuti:
Metro elevators smell like urine.

19. Main daily
writes on
Ruuti:
More
painting
surface to
the city.

20. Public interventions
are meaningful only
when they strengthen
people s relationships
to other beings.
People s joint actions
ought to have an impact
on the system.
People need to have the
capabilities to run their own lives
and play a meaningful role in
the lives of others.
The default approach of the
public sector ought to be help.

21. Tommi Laitio
Director
City of Helsinki, Youth Department
Hietaniemenkatu 9B
PO BOX 5000, 00099 CITY OF HELSINKI
(09) 310 89045
tommi.laitio (a) hel.fi
tommilaitio.munstadi.fi
twitter: tommilaitio