Hello and welcome to Finland! I am Seve Hujanen, the Chair of Seta’s youth committee in Finland. I was asked to come here to talk about our youth committee and rainbow youth in general. I’ll try my best present our Finnish LGBTIQA+ – youth as a 24 year old.
But first I want to thank you all for coming here. This is a very important event for us as Seta and for our youth committee too.
Some people from our youth committee are volunteering here and if you have any questions or things that you wanna discuss with us don’t be shy to come and talk with us.
In the youth committee we have young LGBTIQA+ people from different backgrounds and from different parts of Finland.
We are self-governing and we have 4-6 face-to-face meetings in year. Mostly we communicate via Skype and Whatsapp. We do different campaigns, lobbying and represent the Finnish LGBTIQA+ – youth in different events and publications.
Every year we also give a recognition for the rainbow youth of the year. The recognition goes to the young person who has done exceptional LGBTIQA+ activism locally or in general in Finland.
Our biggest event that we organize every year is the activist weekend, which gathers rainbow youth activists from different parts of Finland for a weekend to discuss about activism and many other subjects.
This year our theme for the weekend is ”The Best Possible”. The event will happen this year in November in Helsinki.
In Finland we had a very important spring this year. We had our parliamentary elections and also the EURO-parliament election.
In spring our youth committee had campaigns for both of these elections.
We try to keep our parliament members aware of issues that we face as the members of rainbow youth in Finland as much is possible.
For the Parliamentary election we asked LGBTIQA+ – youth to write a letter about their lives as a members of LGBTIQA+ communities and hopes for the new parliament. We sent these letters to the newly elected members of the Finnish parliament. Couple of the members answered us about the letters as well.
For the Europarlament election we shared four instagram videos that encouraged Finnish LGBTIQA+ – youth to vote in the EURO-parlament election.
Intersectionality and diversity are things that we try to keep in our mind when we are doing our campaigns and organizing our events.
That’s why we wanted to organize a discussion panel about intersectionality in the LGBTIQA+ movement, and we organized this panel as a part of the Helsinki Pride week program. The participants of the panel came from various different backgrounds and we had a great time discussing how important it is to aim for as welcoming, accessible and safe spaces for all LGBTIQA+ people as possible.
I want to still thank you all for coming here. This event is a great place for networking and getting new friends and making a change. I hope Finland offers you it’s best. And if you want to ask any questions about Finland or Seta or anything, don’t be shy to come and ask from me.
Thank you!
Seve Hujanen
Setan nuorisotoimikunnan puheenjohtaja