FINLAND

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FINLAND
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• Neighbour countries Russia, Norway, Sweden,
  Estonia
• 338,145 square kilometres big
• 5,3 million people
• Most of the people live in the southern part of
  Finland
• Capital city Helsinki
• Other big cities
• Espoo (237 581)
• Tampere (207 697)
• Vantaa (192 226)
• Turku (175 642)

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• Finland is a republic
• Independent since 1917
• Before it was part of Russia and Sweden
• President Tarja Halonen, since 2000
• Joined EU in 1995
• Currency changed from Finnish mark to Euro in
  2002
• Official languages Finnish and Swedish
• Most Finns are members of Evangelical Lutheran
  Church

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Environment

• Landscape is mostly flat
• Highest place is 1324 metres, which is in the
  north on the border with Norway
• Many lakes 187,888 big lakes
• 77 of the land is covered with forest
• Many swamps

• Climate
• In southern Finland there temperate climate, in
  northern subarctic climate
• The climate is affected by the Baltic Sea and
  the Gulf stream, which makes Finland warmer than
  other areas on the same latitude
• In the winter the temperature can get down to
  -35 C in the south, and in the summer up to 25
  C.

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Countryside and agriculture

• 90 of Finland is classified as countryside,
  and 42 of the population lives on these areas.
• The number of farms has been decreasing on last
  years, there is about 70 000 farms now

• Prime productions are milk- and crop production
• Half on the farms produce crops

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• Countryside is divided to three different
  categories countryside close to cities, core
  countryside and sparsely habitated countryside.
• Countryside close to cities has the best
  possibilities to develop. Habitats have the
  possibility to work in the cities and the welfare
  is the best in the country. Many families move to
  these areas.
• The situtation at the core- and sparserly
  habitated countryside is more complicated youth
  moves away and the age of the population gets
  older. Services and workplaces disapperar.
• Decrease and aging of the population is a big
  problem and a threat for the countryside, when a
  lot of young people move away.

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Leader

• LEADER started in Finland in 1995.
• On Leader period 2007-2013 there are 55 LAGs
  and 396 communes involved in Leader.
• The selection of LAGs is done by the Ministry
  of Agriculture and Forestry
• The overall budget for Leader in Finland is
  170,4 million euro
• Many projects are concerned with the problem
  about young people moving away from the
  countryside and the countryside not being
  attractive for new people to move in to.

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• Media Wagon
• The wagon offered training, guiding and
  equipment for people in small villages to create
  their own media.
• It included a director, basic information
  technology equipment and equipment for producing
  digital media.
• It was possible to create websites, TV-films,
  virtual photo exhibitions, documents and
  animations.
• The wagon had 25 "Media stops at schools,
  village houses etc.
• 36 films were made during the project
• All films were shown on a local TV channel and
  many also participated film festivals
• Mostly children were using the wagon, but also
  people of different ages

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Project Give me 5

• To give young people a change to realize their
  ideas and dreams
• Because young people have a good idea of how to
  practically improve the life on the area
• A competition was organized, where young people
  could present their ideas and best ones were
  realized
• A website was made, and a person from the LAG
  toured around schools telling youth about the
  possibility
• Many different projects were realized
  happenings concerning sports and computers,
  repairing sports facilities etc.

10
Project Grandmas cottage

• Goals to make it easy to move to rural areas,
  improving the image of the area, attracting new
  residents
• How? Building modern grandmas cottages, which
  would be a tempting and easy way of living in
  rural areas
• building of houses started in 2006, after first
  finding out that there is interest in this kind
  of living

• Houses are suitable for small families or people
  living alone. They are affordable, and have easy
  access to services
• Local builders etc. were used for building the
  houses
• The project proved to be very successful

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• Music festival Sulatto 04
• Organized by young people to young people
• Lasted for two 2 days first day was for youth,
  second day for children aged 2-10 and their
  families
• Free of charge, alcohol free
• Bands popular within youth and some less known
  local bands
• For children music, theatre, magic shows, games

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• Orienteering sport and innovation
• A Finnish and an Italian LAG started
  co-operation related with orienteering
• Goals of the project were to
• - develop international skills of local actors
• - developing ecotourism combined with
  orienteering,
• - develop orienteering as a hobby (especially
  for children and young people).
• Many things were accomplished
• - several orienteering school camps and youth
  camps both in Finland and in Italy
• - visits between people from Finland and Italy
• - trainings
• - tourist events
• - a lot of material concerning orienteering
  such as education packages, maps and marketing
  material

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KINOKISA - CINEMA CONTEST AND FESTIVAL

• College of North Karelia and a LAG organized
  together a cinema contest and festival for
  filmmaking students
• To give students a possibility to show their
  work and to meet students from other schools, and
  making to college and it's students familiar to
  the small city of Outokumpu where to college was
  situated
• the event was held 4 times during the project,
  from year 2002-2005
• The festival was 1-4 days long and consisted of
  a short film competition, open lectures by
  professionals, workshops and concerts
• The festival got a lot of publicity both locally
  and nation wide