I
n many ways Diak’s “story” with Asia has been a great success. First of all, hardly any university or university of applied sciences in Finland has sent as many students to Asia for placements. Interest towards Asia has been amazing over these years. It’s been the same also towards Africa. It seems students in nursing and social work have a heart for the needy in the world and that’s how it should be. Yet we have been very conscious that we are not sending anyone to Asia or Africa to save the world, but to learn more about this world – and learn more about themselves as future professionals who will be working in a multicultural world.Secondly, Diak has been very fortunate with the partners in Asia. We have had certain key institutions and key coordinators there from almost the be-ginning. Most of them have shared their experiences in this booklet. I believe that we have learned together. We have made mistakes but have been able to discuss them and find better ways of doing things.
Students may not have always been easy to work with and that has been a learning process in both ends. Sometimes individual placements inside a country did not serve best the placement goals or the institutions or or-phanages moved far away. Luckily new options have opened up.
Thirdly, North South South and Hope project opened a new era in Diak’s cooperation with Asia. Finally Diak was able to interact equally with partners in Nepal and Vietnam. Starting a University level exchange program was a natural continuum for the pervious cooperation. We knew the partners befo-rehand and it made the activities on a new level easier.
Our Finnish partners TEC and Centria were involved from the very begin-ning of Hope 1 and the cooperation has been smooth all along the way. From the very beginning of the planning process of Hope we wanted to work ac-cording to Diak’s values, mutually, not making all the decisions in north and
“throwing” them to South. Our partners are the best ones to tell how well we succeeded in that.
NSS is a mobility program and our experiences have shown that there is need for further cooperation. It’s hopefully only a matter of time that HEI IKI or some other program will open new avenues for cooperation even in deeper level.
Development of international activities in Diak
Working for 14 years in Diak’s international team without a break gives some insight into the process that has been going on in Diak. First of all I realized only lately that in the late 1990’s there were in Helsinki Alppikatu some good beginnings for orientation of students going abroad. My col-leagues Raili Gothoni and Kyösti Voima at least have been involved in the teaching. In Järvenpää I can read from the Hong Kong material that there has been some orientation, at least in writing, for students going to Hong Kong.
Besides, they took part in Felm’s course. Some preparations were done also in Pieksämäki for the Varanasi group. Personally I had started orientating the students in Kirstinkatu in an informal way.
Already in the very beginning of this century Diak’s international team started discussing about the orientation program and making plans for basic requirements for orientation and a couple of years later for the whole pro-cess of going abroad. That development has continued over the years and even if Kyösti Voima and I have been responsible for that on Diak’s level for years, more and more people have been involved in the planning process and also in the realization of it. Besides the face to face orientation the role of virtual studies have become more important but will hopefully never be the only means of orientation.
When looking through Diak’s international strategies for about a decade you can see that the role of developing countries has become more and more visible even on a strategic level. I think that in reality Diak’s coopera-tion with global south has been strong and visible in reality from the very beginning.
What has been very meaningful is the role of research department that has been active in international activities for years, also with global south. Our partners in Asia have been requesting support in research methods from the beginning of Hope project and the topic have been in the centre of Hope I and Hope 2.
Future in my eyes
Leaving Diak’s international activities is almost like letting your own child take off. This time only it’s me, the mother who is retiring, and letting the grown up children continue. It’s not difficult to leave the international activi-ties at this point. There are so many able people working on them with fresh thinking and great ideas.
It’s most difficult to give up work that has been inspiring and exciting and never boring even after so many years. It’s hard to give up frequent contact
with so many wonderful people around the world. Luckily many have be-come also personal friends and private contacts will continue.
If I should say that what I hope for Diak’s international activities in the futu-re, there are at least the following things:
I hope that the student mobility could be raised back to the level of 2010-11. The new curriculum might have been a bit confusing for many students who plan to think of going abroad. It means that the changing organization should pay a lot of attention to international information days, information in tutorial groups, lessons of first years of studies and by study advisors.
International activities should be seen in the walls of the buildings and eve-rywhere were Diak is present.
Diak has a lot of good placements not only in Asia but elsewhere as well. It’s good to advertise them bravely to students. The role of ex-students should also be at least as strong as now, maybe even stronger in inspiring and en-couraging students to go. For a few years back quite a few students were interested in making their thesis in south, helping out the partner organiza-tions. I hope that students could be encouraged to do that also in the future.
Good guidelines were created already in 2005 by Anne Määttä who spent some time in Bangladesh to see how the cooperation with thesis work could be developed.
The rather new Mobility Online application system is good, but still a bit stiff and there should be some improvements in using that – I know the sys-tem is developing all the time. So far it’s still a bit difficult to use it as a daily assistant for follow up work of a coordinator.
Hopefully the number of international coordinators will not be reduced, but in contrary the coordinators should have more working hours in order to serve better students, teachers and partners – and have some time also for developmental work and well as for the projects.
Hopefully Cimo will continue NSS program and rather open more and more options so that even a network like Hope could have chances to apply for new funding. Hope has not finished the job yet!
I hope that also in the future active cooperation with Asian partners will continue. There are people who have dedicated themselves among many other things to serving our students as well as possible and I think that’s very valuable. The contacts need to be kept alive.
It’s good to see that the work of more than ten years has carried some fruit.
It’s been team work, most of all. No one could have accomplished all this alo-ne, it’s demanded many people’s passion, commitment and enthusiasm. I’m happy to say at this point THANK YOU to all involved in Diak’s international work as well as in helping me to write this book and I wish the best for all.