After stone age excavations it was City Hall in Helsinki this afternoon, discussing municipally owned or supported community centers in the Finnish capital. We saw some good examples of other city region associations having done a great work renovating old historical buildings that otherwise would have been demolished. Superb work by our friends in other parts of town !
I hope that also we here in Pitäjänmäki – Sockenbacka will one day have the chance to build up a place of our own, especially as we are growing very fast. This is a part of town where the multicultural profile has increased maybe faster than anywhere else. We need to work a lot to preserve and develop our community cohesion and for that we need tools.
Actually we have tried to get our own space already over many years – even decades – as my predecessors as association presidents tell me.
Today, we work on our own, financed by our members through their modest contributions, without any city support.
The city services had made an obvious mistake and budgeted far too little this year for our kind of residents’ organisations. It did feel a bit strange that they were very complementary about the work we are doing but just had to excuse themselves as they had ran out of money.
Not the fault of the responsible civil servants who have always been very supportive, but maybe something for the politicians to take another look at.
Well in any case, today we manage with the support of our local members’ and the help we get from the Pitäjänmäki business community…