Each year, Aalto Global Impact coordinates projects for different courses within Aalto University, related to societal impact. During fall 2015, Aalto Global Impact worked on a case regarding refugees in Finland. The students, Jonna Härmävaara, Sara Nyyssölä, Oona Casalegno, Yunkun Niu, and Emilio Zamudio Murillo, have worked on this case intensively during the past months, and have now written an intermediate report. They write:
“The project focus arises from challenges that several European countries are currently facing with increased amounts of refugees and asylum seekers entering European countries.
In Finland, there has been a significant increase on the amounts of applications for
asylum. In September and November there has been a 2000% increase in the amount
of applications received compared to the previous year.”
The students focused their project around the lengthy and bureaucratic process refugees face after arriving in Finland, during which time they cannot work, and as a result not build social and professional networks. They linked the abundant entrepreneurship ecosystem to the opportunities for refugees, and developed a business model to realize the potential. They highlighted 3 key activities in their report:
1. Running a multicultural café with relaxed atmosphere
2. Facilitating peer-to-peer support and meetings
3. Providing (entrepreneurship) training
The full report is available upon request from the team members (firstname.lastname@aalto.fi)
Watch the video they made:
This post was written by AGI
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