What am I up to politically?
I believe that Turku is the best place in the world, and in to keep it best, we must focus on right subjects:
- Without a working and appropriate fit-for-purpose educational path and internationality our city and its business community cannot succeed and flourish
- The well being of residents and also the repuation and brand of Turku depend on a living sport and exercise culture
- Turku has a strong innovation sector, and we need to sustain its lifeforce by exploring the opportunities that lie for example in digitalisation
- Our city must be attractive and great for us ordinary people, for which reason the wellbeing of families is the key, that may be turned in addition to already mentioned by city planning, traffic solutions and childhood education.
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Sports and exercise
The well being of residents and also the reputation and brand of Turku depend on a living sport and exercise culture.
As concrete ideas I wish to lift up at least:
Kids, teens and special groups possibilities for physical exercise
- More non-competetive sports opportunities (like little-league) and free access hours in sports facilities
- More opportunitites for citicens needing special support
- Getting girls more excited about team sports to gain economies of scale
- Digital platform to support finding new friends to play with
Adults physical exercise
- Campaigns to promote small acts of everyday life that are meant as exercise (hiking routes, stairs instead of elevator, etc.)
- Proper maintenance and lighting of exercise venues (like riverside walkways or the Halinen-route)
- Network for rental bikes, like Helsinki has already done.
Sports
- Possibility to effectively combine professional sport and education by supporting best practises and venue locations
- Harnessing Kupittaa area of its full potential, e.g. sports academy
- Securing the operations of current sports academies and clubs
- Helping to fill up the seats in sport events
Education
Without a working and appropriate fit-for-purpose educational path, our city and its business community cannot succeed and flourish.
The focus of educational improvements should be on:
Securing high quality education to support individual development and local businesses
- Ensuring efficient use of resources in different facilities
- Study the possibilities to expand M.Sc.Tech (DI) studies at Turku
- Supporting the school and local businesses cooperation to accelerate finding jobs to students
More option to pre-school and elementary school.
- More language teaching into pre-schools by ”language bathing” and shared resources
- Securing the freedom of choice by supporting also private education such as Steiner pedagogy based schools
- Combining public and private offering in kindergartens to secure close proximity for care
- Securing the inclusion of special groups by enabling near-home school also for kids with disabilities
Supporting new people adapt into Turku
- Fast access to language training (Finnish or Swedish)
- Fast access to meaningful education to support access to workforce and society
Free kindergartens?
- Investigating the possibility to provide free-of-charge kindergartens
Internationality
Since Middle Ages, internationality has been a prerequisite to our city’s and its industry’s success, and thus, ensuring the international interaction of Turku is the most important mission for the city.
City has only limited possibilities of promoting internationality however, a clear role as a facilitator is needed. City needs to create a launch pad to companies and enable them to travel across the world and back to Turku.
Speeding up the export markets and interantional development of businesses
-Turku has a great basis for service providers (WTC, JCN, TurkuSciencePark) but these services should be offered to companies even more efficiently.
-Turku should be marketed for global enterprises as an appealing district for branch offices (Why are we better than Helsinki, Tampere, Stockholm, airport, 1-hour train to Helsinki)
-Explore the possibilities to facilitate voluntary-based company sparring clubs lead by successful entrepreneurs
-Current efforts regarding international development should be evaluated with international companies and their employees
-Investigate the possibility to create a service circle to support international business, so that new companies could concentrate on their own area of expertise (Turku has a plenty of brilliant experts of international business, how can we use these valuable human resources?)
More language training and international skills
-Children should have more possibilities for foreign language training to support their interest in international affairs
-International business culture lectures should be added to teaching plans in schools, for examples in high schools.
Keeping educated and international workforce in Turku
-To investigate whether intensifying possibilities for language training for international professionals would make it easier for them to settle down
-Career possibilities for international students must be enhanced, so that we don’t lose the workforce we have educated and who already are internationally oriented.
Turku might also have a more active role in educational export markets
-In research training and further education, University of Turku must be a real competitor for all the other respectful universities in Nordic countries
-Explore the possibilities to market more efficiently MBA examinations, which are already available in Turku
-Investigate the possibilities to offer more broadly web-based eMBA- or similar higher education
-Co-operation of University of Applied Sciences Turku and University of Turku to offer tailored staff training for companies
Digitalization
Digitalisation based solutions are nowadays a lot more than just a hype and significant business possibilities are linked to digitalisation.
Among other things Turku could have a more active role within the following areas:
Digital learning solutions and educational applications
-To test in controlled manner various new techniques in learning, to enhance for example tablet and mobile –based learning
-To support pupils with different disabilities to learn with digital solutions
-To activate pupils and students to developed new learning solutions
-Investigate how teaching and learning could be detached to only certain places
Improved access to services that Turku provides via digitalisation
-More possibilites to pay with mobile, for example in sport facilities
-Public transport time tables should be even better available via mobile applications and flat screens.
-More user friendly and compatible Electronic reservation systems
-All city services for citizens should be available from one place
-All possible material should be in web-based format and available for everyone, based on Open Data –idea.
Helping to commercialize new inventions and innovations
-More close relations between students and industry and investigators
-Turku Chamber for commerce could facilitate the innovation club for proof test for new ideas
A director of digital affairs?
-There are surely enough managers already, but do they all do the right things – in our times it is extremely important that there is one actor who takes responsibility of whole digitalisation in Turku city
-Digitalisation Manager is not the same as IT Manager. Digitalisation manager should be responsible for citizen services and city’s international development among digitalisation area.
