The Youth houses

THE YOUTH HOUSES

In these past eight months I almost always worked in youth houses; in Italy we haven’t this kind of places, in which kids or teenagers can go after school for relaxing, playing some games, eating or just for keeping company to each other. I think these are perfect situations to make new friends and to be in a safe place outside home.

Thanks to these I had the opportunity to meet local people and be much closer to the Finnish culture but I have also to say it was pretty hard at the beginning because the guys were too shy for speaking in English but I always tried to have a contact with them.

In the first two month of my volunteering service I have been in Areena which is well frequented mostly by teenagers between 13 and 18 years old.

The activity they practise most is billiards; I think the best moment is when, at four o’clock, we open the Areena’s doors and we see the guys run to the pool table because they want to play first 😀 .

I have to say that I preferred working in Hakki, another youth house in Kerava, because the kids were younger and a bit more open minded; thanks to this we had the occasion to organise many manual activities, games indoor and outdoor or again movie evening with some good snacks; as an instance we organised the disco which has always been a great success.

I loved our disco night with the kids, we usually had more than eighty children in Hakki. The children came there for having fun, dancing and not to be shy and quite… they were totally crazy and I loved it. It was really nice also because we had to dress up and so we could be much more flaky.

JENGA

Jenga is like to be in Heaven if you are interest in art or making handcrafts because they have everything, any kind of materials.

In Puu-verstas they most work with wood, the guys are able to make furnitures or wooden toys for selling in Jenga shop; there is also a work place called Verhoomo in which I made a blaket and we most work with fabric, they usually renovate furnitures like armchair or sofa but they also create bags or funny mirrors. If you work in Mekka you will improve your media skills with advanced cameras and softwares.

This is what happened so far 😀