Center Tapulli Youth
Per Carmen García Velasco
 

Tapulli is a youth center which depends on the city council. The municipal social services’ coordinator is the highest authority in these centers. This is not a political position, but only an administrative one. Depending on him we can find the youth centers’ director, who coordinates both the general and bureaucratical services and the youth centers in each district of the city. These centers are also tied to the municipal departments of Culture and Sports, coordinating their
proposals with cultural services and schools.

Purpose of the youth centers:

1. To offer different opportunities for the use of the leisure time.
2. To promote social participation.
3. To favour the pre-conditions for independence.

Attended  population:

This service is a universal offer for all the youths between 10 and 18 years old. Although the offer is open to all, the demand, mainly in the 13 to 18 years old section, corresponds to families with some social risk indication, or in a needy situation. The families with more resources have class prejudices and do not use these services. Tapulli offers 214 seats and receives some 10.000 visits of its associates every year.

 
7-12 
13-16
17 ó+
total
Small
63
24
5
92
Small
71
23
28
122


The use distribution of these centers as per gender can be compared to the data obtained in the use of “ludotecas” in Spain. (See Borja i Solé, Las ludotecas. Octaedro, 2000)

Staff:

The teachers working in these centers are specialized in some of the aspects that follow, which come to cover the needs asked for by the groups of youths:
 

Music and bands, Adventures, computing-multimedia, Theater-Dance and performances, Vehicle repairs, Graffitis, and other workshops proposed by the youth. For instance, they have a workshop for girls of other cultures who need/want to meet alone.

The Tapulli center has five carers with professional an upper degree training in the social specialties of education and early childhood education.
 

The teacher's role:

The teachers aim to offer care and aid to the youths, to encourage their competences, to give advice over different themes, to favour their autonomy and initiative and to prevent exclusion. Special attention is paid to young people in risk of exclusion, practicing the pedagogy of "I am able…", "I know…".

The centers specialize, at the same time, in different issues: pets and farm animals, Graffitis, skating, closed groups (families with specially difficult children), gymnasiums, bands, vehicle repairs, canoeing and scuba diving, crafting, and kitchen-handcrafts.
 

Asked about their objectives in regard to interculturality, the teachers explained that the aim was the assimilatión of the immigrant groups in the Finnish society. They also talked about the presence of skin groups in the neighbourhood, and how this had meant that some immigrant young people kept away from this center. Provision of this kind of centers in Helsinki:

  • 83 youth centers
  • 19 buildings for the different organizations
  • 6 vehicles (vehicle repair shops)
  • 2 camping-sites
  • 2 training centers
  • Others: information, multicultural, …

Budget for 2002: 23 million euros. 47000 euros devoted to salaries and maintenance of the centers.
Trip To Finland with the magazine Infancia from the Teachers’ Association Rosa Sensat. April/May 2002
© http://www.elsafareig.org/
To return to the pàgina intial of the trip