Organizations need a home

“Science and culture are vital for an alive and growing country. If science and culture don’t exist, we have nothing. There’s no knowledge about the past, no understanding about the present, and no thought about the future.” Susanna Petterson (freely translated)

A blooming garden requires constant care. To grow, plants need water, nutrients, and occasional weeding. However, excessive weeding can impact a critical symbiotic relationship, causing your dearly nurtured plant to wilt. Cutting out weeds can hit critical roots and damage them. 

We live in a time where culture is treated like an invasive species that takes space and nutrients from others. If I compared culture to a plant, it would be the lily of the valley, Finland’s national flower. A treasure that decorates the forest floor with its delicate flowers. We’re desperately digging for financial growth, but have simultaneously hit the roots of our most important assets and damaged them. It’s time to plant new life and nurture growth instead of weeding and chopping! 

By focusing on nothing but investments and innovations, we’ve forgotten the source of all innovations, creativity. Creativity is the root cause for everything new, and it is nurtured by freedom, learning, and safety. Safety enables us to use our brain capacity for other things besides survival. Although it’s sometimes said that suffering creates the most beautiful art, it simply isn’t true. It only means that our creations mirror the suffering and pain that they are born out of. Why would we want suffering and scarcity to shape our future?

It’s hard to understand decisions that remove the most basic prerequisites from organizations and diminish their ability to participate in activities. Members are of course at the heart of all organizations, but they cannot escape the realities. Organizations need a home. A space, where their requirements are filled and members can develop and grow together. In Vaasa, spaces are a problem starting with housing, but that doesn’t make the need for premises disappear. That’s why existing spaces must be protected at all costs instead of making organizations pack up and move year in and year out. 

In the scale of Vaasa, organizations have a tremendous impact in upholding the vitality of student culture. Organizations enable finding a community in studies and leisure. Organizations create a sense of community and make students feel at home in Vaasa. As the number of students keeps growing, the importance of this is even greater, as our community nurtures security and wellbeing. 

Organizations must be able to root in Vaasa so that students can do the same. Student years should be a time of growing, learning, and enjoying life for everyone.