INTERNATIONAL RESIDENTS AND CITY EXPERTS CO-CREATE SOLUTIONS The City of Espoo is piloting new ways to encourage participation and engage residents in the development of city services. Especially among the foreign-speaking population, due to the lack of information on how they can influence matters in their hometown, participation is often low. Therefore, Espoo has adopted projects like English as a Language of Service and the pilot project ‘Espoo Town Hall Meetings’. Espoo aims to find new ways for improving city services by working together with international residents. The Espoo Town Hall Meetings are interactive events in English focusing on changing themes related to the development of the City of Espoo. They aim to increase opportunities for international residents to influence and feel a sense of belonging to the city. The project also increases the city’s understanding of the needs and wishes of the foreign-speaking population. The theme for each Espoo Town Hall Meeting is planned together with city experts from different units of the city organisation, where effectively engaging the residents in 44
co-creating solutions will help the city’s efforts to provide the best services possible for every resident of Espoo. The first Espoo Town Hall Meeting was organized in the beginning of 2020 for international residents to work on measures that promote employment. Residents met with city experts face to face, to provide the city with insight about employment related concerns that particularly affect residents with international backgrounds. The feedback was then used to improve city employment services and provisions designed for the foreign-speaking population. Due to the corona virus pandemic, the following Town Hall Meetings have been organised virtually, bringing on the positives and negatives of online platforms to the interactive meetings. The second Espoo Town Hall Meeting focused on urban planning and future development of the biggest of Espoo’s five urban centres – Leppävaara. The following events which are being planned for the rest of the year will focus on the English language communication about the city’s early childhood education and education services and the development of client processes in healthcare services. The project will culminate in December when international residents will be asked to participate in the making of the new city strategy – the Espoo Story – that will be finalized in 2021. As a pilot project, the Espoo Town Hall Meetings have brought new ideas and a renewed energy into Espoo’s toolbox to support resident participation – particularly from the international communities
by Jasmin Repo | jasmin.repo@espoo.fi
