Finnish team introduction.

My name is Majid Ishaq i am from Karachi Pakistan. My hobbies are visiting different places and enjoying the beauty of nature and fishing. At the moment im studying business in Point College International for high Qualified teaching stuff to make my future bright and to be a successful person.



Hello my name is Jennifer Asare Yeboah I am hmmmm years old I am originally from Ghana but moved to Italy when I was child, making Italy the only country close to my heart..I can say I have only the best of both Italian and Ghanian cultures even if the Italian is more dominant. This is my 1st year of study in Finland at Porvoo international college also known as point college where am acquiring as more business knowledge as I can to be successful after my studies.. I have already assimilated to the Finnish culture too.. I am pretty positive about continuing my education after point college though.

Hello friends,

My name is Shakuntala Samuel. I am from Lahore, Pakistan. This is my 1st year of studying business in Porvoo International College. My hobbies are listening music, singing , cooking food and to spend good time with my family and friends. I also worked in Bahrain for 2 years as a cook and in future i want to open my restaurant and be a successful person .

I am so excited to be a part of this Nordplus. I am a hardwoking and a girl with positive thinking so I am ready to work with my other friends.

Nordplus participation in Product Demonstartion Day at Point College

Hi Everyone
Please remember that we will be participating in the Product Demonstration Day at Point College on Wednesday 5.11.2014.

At Product Demonstration Day, Point College students set up fair stands for various local companies and market their products. Sometimes they have samples of the goods, others "freebies" or just giving out information about the company they represent.

What does participation mean to us Nordplus students?

It means that we will be allocated two stands at which we will represent both the objectives of Nordplus AND the countries and schools represented here.

What do you need to do?

Bring along with you to Porvoo Finland marketing material about your countries, schools, towns, country flags, places of interest for tourists to visit in your towns, videos, posters, fliers, brochures. Any good marketing material from your country will be appreciated.

Once you are here, you will work in a multicultural team to plan your stands; the look, what will be there and who will represent what and when. There are 2 stands and they can both look alike or completely different; you will decide in your multicultural teams what to do.

The team objective is to make a good representative stand and sell the "products" (countries, tourist venues, etc. that you have decided on. Your creativity and marketing skills will be developed here (as well as your multicultural teamwork skills and self-confidence).

Welcome to Porvoo. We will have fun and learn a lot.
Bryan Roberts

Here you will find five case studies which will be presented on Thursday 6th of November.

TEAM 1 CASE STUDY 1

Diana Tretjakova

Andris Zujevs

Janete Trestip

PLANNING MULTICULTURAL WORK PLACE FOR 

TEAMWORK

What kind of obstacles physical work environment create for the team work? If we say that the most of the working places today are multicultural and we encourage people cultural co-operation shouldn’t we then also build and plan our joint working environment culturally sophisticated places where is many places to meet, discuss and share experiences and thoughts. Create your ideal “bird nest” for your multicultural team. It can be even a future building for Point (we will build it in next five years) or any other kind of a work place. Be visual and use pictures.

 TEAM 2 CASE STUDY 2.   

Simona Ponomarenko

Sölvi Fannar Sigmarsson

Viktorija Karpovaite    

MARKETING YOUR SUPER TEAM

An international company is looking for a multicultural team to plan and implement educational project. Your (group) team wants to apply for this interesting assignment. Prepare an attractive application by using modern technology and assure the managers making this recruitment decision. Try to bring up the best parts of each team member and explain how does your multicultural team work and how does it influence in your output.

 TEAM 3. CASE STUDY 3.     

Rudolfs Freimanis

Shakuntala Samuel

Siim Reedo

CREATING BRIDGES OF UNDERSTANDING

Very often people don’t understand the behavior of people coming from another culture and this creates conflicts and problems both in the society and work places. Your team has excellent multicultural team work skills and therefore you are invited to be as consultants in your community.

Your task is to create practices and ways to expand knowledge and create bridges of understanding from the culture to culture. Try to create practical and innovate ways. You can find hints from

the TV programmes “Changing diets” and “Day as a muslim”, where a person lives a one day as someone else. Try to find at least three different new practices.

TEAM 4. CASE STUDY 4.     

Greta Trofimovaite

Kristofer Ivar Knutsen

Majid Ishaq

ORGANIZE A FLASH MOB

During some years flash mobs has become very popular way to create attention for “good reasons” like social problems or mobbing. Your task is to organize a flash mob which focuses on cultural diversity and co-operation. Be creative and try to get as many people as possible for your flash mob. Remember that you can utilize also social media to create attention for your flash mob.

TEAM 5. CASE STUDY 5.     

Raul Rajang

Krystsina Tsiutchanka

Jennifer Asare Yeboah

MULTICULTURAL BUSINESS CULTURE

You represent five different countries. In each country there are some typical characteristics of business culture. Some of these might be good things and some not so good. Your task is to

discuss about business culture of each country and choose parts from each combining them as the perfect and best practices for your multicultural team. Explain also why you have chosen these

characteristics.

Good luck and welcome to Finland.

Sanna Laulumaa

Essay From Finland.

Both Society and Businesses Benefit from Multicultural Teamwork

In an increasingly globalized economy, people from different cultures and ethnic groups find themselves working together more and more frequently. Within these groups are people of various ages, gender, religious beliefs, backgrounds, physical appearances, sexual orientation, disabilities and nationality. All coming together with their own personal workplace habits. Some with little or no training and others with many years of experience. Therefore, this may lead us to the question: Would it not be easier to form only homogeneous teams? Well, the answer might be yes and no

A multicultural society is defined as, “A place where a variety of different cultural/ethnic groups live together within the same society”. Through multiculturalism, we have an opportunity to open our minds and to learn how others think and live. Furthermore, multiculturalism is seen by its supporters as a fairer system that allows people to express who they are within a society, One that is more tolerant and better adaptable to social issues.

Multicultural teams play a vital role in the era of globalization and allow considerable advantages to global businesses .This provides more effective and productive team players. Thus, increased creativity due to multiple perspectives, more and maybe better ideas. Furthermore, diversity forces us to focus on understanding others within the team and to respect different points of view. This often leads to identifying problems and finding better alternative solutions and to reach a consensus on major decisions.

Talking from experience Porvoo International College has over 25 different nationalities. The QBA is the biggest example of multicultural teamwork we learn about other cultures and interact together as a team. Teachers find creative ways to make learning about other cultures more engaging like the international friendship day, church boat racing and many other events.

Teamwork and collaboration are most effective when team members feel comfortable in expressing and sharing their ideas freely. There is less difficulty in communicating, in order to build a more cohesive team. As opposed to having only one nationality of employees, a multicultural group offers perspectives and viewpoints that may be advantageous to problem solving. Groups represented by only one culture may be unable to “Think outside the box”. A “Box” that was only shaped by their own culture and experiences. Multiculturalism in the workplace offers an advantage of broadly different skills and competencies within a welcoming atmosphere.

Unfortunately, variety of cultures within a workforce also creates potential increased costs related to interpersonal conflicts, employee turnover and loss of productivity. Often times, problems arise in communication due to individuals who harbor certain beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, and values based on their own inherent backgrounds. This may cause them to misinterpret written, verbal and/or certain physical messages of communication. It is natural that if you have people together with different backgrounds and values, employees with prejudices could use these differences against each other.

In conclusion, the positive effects of multiculturalism clearly outweigh the negative effects. Unfortunately, in many global societies, national cultures are very deep rooted.  Therefore, immediate reform is necessary. Businesses, schools and organizations need to provide required cultural awareness and sensitivity training to help create a environmental culture of tolerance and acceptance. This would globally benefit us all to truly be free from imposed societal biases and stereotypes

Essay from Estonia

                                     Multicultural teamwork

To start with, we must admit that the topic is very difficult to be discussed concerning our school situation as the majority of our students are Estonians and we lack the opportunity of studying in multicultural teams. Therefore, we are going to look at a broader meaning of multicultural teamwork.

We live in the era where the workforce and capital constantly moves, which is normal, and is one of the principles in EU. And when human resources move, they take along their language, culture and beliefs. Furthermore, when different cultures mix, one has to change its way of thinking and needs to learn multicultural teamwork skills. In this essay, we will discuss whether and how the Estonian society and businesses benefit from multicultural teamwork skills.

To begin with, why is it so important to know how to socialize and behave in multicultural world, why is it so important to socialize? For young people, socializing is everything; it is discussions, talking to each other, expressing themselves. Our world has been built on socializing. But let us look at the situation in Estonia. We do not have many different ethnic groups here. Mostly it is just Estonians and Russians. According to the statistics of 2011 the population of Estonia is 1,294,455, 69% of which are Estonian, 25% are Russian 6% are of other nationalities like Ukraine, Belarus, Finnish and German. So Estonia is not as multicultural as some other nations, like UK or Germany.

But even if there is only one large ethnic group besides Estonians, there are still problems that we just cannot get along with. There are somewhat huge language and cultural barriers between the two groups. The barrier stays strong because both, the Estonians and Russians are unable to stay open minded and lack social skills. If we could overcome this barrier there would be numerous things that would benefit our society. For example, there would be much more workforce. At the moment a lot of Russians are unable to find suitable and satisfying posts because they do not speak Estonian, and employers avoid Russians because the employers do not speak Russian. It is a loss for both sides. We believe that whilst having multicultural work environment, the outcome would be better. That is because different cultural background means different way of thinking and different way of solving problems. If we had such teams, we would have flexibility to solve lots of problems in the society.

Presentation of Latvia team members

My name is Diāna Tretjakova and I'm excited to be joining this project. I am from Riga, Latvia. I'm 18 years old. I represent two cultures Russian and Latvian. I study advertising and in the future I'm planning to make short social advertising movies, that makes people look around and think. 

My name is Simona Ponomarenko. I am 18 years old, my culture is latvian and byelorussian, but all my life I cultivated Latvian culture. I studies indrustrial commersional employee at last year.  My future plans are to start studies at good university.

My name is Rūdolfs Freimanis. I am 18 years old and I am from Riga. I represent only Latvian culture.
My future plans are quite simple at the moment. First I would like to finish school and to have a stable and good-paid job.

Essay from Latvia

Both society and business benefit from multicultural teamwork skills

Teamwork and especially multicultural teamwork nowadays is considered as the reason why world keeps existing. Multicultural teamwork provides both society and business with innovative ideas that keep society and business moving forward. Directors and managers tend to hire people from different cultures in order to improve productivity and work-environment.

Let us start by considering that teamwork is the thing that keeps business running even if people of different cultural backgrounds are involved. These days there are alot of companies that hire people from different countries. Of course, directors and managers need to have proper approach how to manage them because every culture has its own opinion about what kind of a leader they need. For example French people are used to leaders who are dictatorial and autocratic. Meetings are also very crucial events that need to be held. At start they must be held very often so different people could get to know each other and, of course, to share their different ideas and opinions. These meetings will develop their language, communication skills, working skills, respect  and productivity which hugely contributes to business.

Society is also a winner when we talk about multicultural teamwork. One of the benefits that society receives are new,qualitative and innovative products because when people of different cultural backgrounds work together, they generate lots of good ideas and the best ones are chosen to be put into practice. Another benefit can be seen in international schools where students are from different counties. While working in a group consisting of different culture people they, learn not to be affraid of them, how to respect them and how to support them when the time comes. This will boost their performance in the future and will bring huge advantages to the company they will be working for.

It is now time to discuss the other side of multicultural teamwork. Not always multicultural teamwork will bring only benefits to society and business. For example, there are people who are used to doing everything by themselves and just cant stand working in a team. Factors such as rasism, fears from meeting new people, fears from other people’s thoughts just stimulate them to hate teamwork more and more. And eventually they will start doing things that will slowly destroy company they are working for.

In conclusion I would like to say that multicultural teamwork is a key to success. The benefits you can gain from it are just amazing. No matter what the minuses of multicultural teamwork are, it will always bring benefits if group leaders know the right approach that would work on all group members.

Feedback from latvian team

Travel notes.
Impressions from our trip to Akureyri.
Video made by Klāvs.

http://youtu.be/DBy9d8qs15M

Iceland - The case studies

Students on this case study: Guðrún Vaka, Noora Lehtonen and Madis Loik

Elisa, (age 15) has always been very preoccupied with the media and the stereotypes it produces. She does not have the figure of a model and is unhappy with her body. Her parents worry about her very much and supect that she is possibly anorexic or bulimic.

Students on this case study: Frida Grönqvist, Þórdís Alda and Klavs bokss

 Rick (age 15) has a low self-esteem and it worries him a lot that so few “like” his postings in the media. He always begins the day by counting the “likes” and compares the number with those of his peers. This has caused undue anxiety and withdrawal.

Students on this case study: Shakuntala Samuel, Hafsteinn and Greta Trofimovaitė

Stine (age 15) loves dancing and has been dancing since 5. Like so many girls she watches Youtube very much, especially music videos, in order to learn new steps. The problem is that she has begun to dress like the models in the videos and her dancing has become increasingly erotic.

Students on this case study: Janete Trestip, Aiva Stroza and Jonas Sinkevičius

John (age 15) has always been interested in computers and computer-games. When 13, he began lifting weights excessively because he wanted to look like types in the games. Now he looks more like Hulk on steroids than a normal 15 year-old boy and his attitude towards girls is rather twisted. He never looks girls in the eye but rather regards them as a piece of meat. Besides, his ideas regarding what is allowed and not allowed in sexual matters is very abnormal.

Students on this case study: Julija Kornilova, Madli Köiv and Evaldas Vélius

Bella (age 15) had a very unpleasant experience when a boy she trusted put Snapchat on the Internet where she posed naked. This Snapchat is now the main item of fun among the kids in her school. Her parents are very worried about her and whether she will be able to get over this unpleasant experience. Also, they wonder why she sent this Snapchat in the first place? Is this normal for a 15 year-old girl?

Iceland - Lake Myvatn - The pictures :)

Here are the pictures from Lake Myvatn  :)
Beautiful people in beautiful surroundings :)

Mobility 2. November 3-7.

Both society and business benefit from Multicultural teamwork skills

Hello to everybody!

It is time to book your travelling tickets and start all the preparations before the 2nd mobility of our project.This time your host will be Porvoo International College from Finland.

Some practical advices,reminders and short insight into the planning before we meet:)

o   Same home works depending on this topic must be done in advance and posted on the blog 

o    We will participate in a big campaign organized by our college inside the building with visitors from outside where NORDPLUS teams will be represented and will own 2 stands,Therefore, please,bring with you different things describing your country-flags, posters, pictures, videos, pp slides etc, even some small snacks from your countries. Please, use your creativity and imaginationJ. The campaign will be filmed by professional team and you will be asked to give interviews.

o   We will have a multicultural teamwork, lectures, case studies,brainstorming afternoon with AKAN-Borgå Folkakademi students of a programme for immigrants, representatives of LUCKAN, which is  Information and Culture Center for Swedish talking minority in Finland., 

o   We will take part in SVENSKA Dagen-SWEDISH Day. It is an official day in Finnish calendar for Swedish talking minority in Finland.

o   Porvoo Youth Center  will be visited and might be we will meet there Thai Quach, alumni of Point College, now-an entrepreneur and member of Porvoo City Council.

o   You will get a nice sightseeing of Porvoo guided by Point students and friendship evening at Point College with many surprises!

This and more you can expect being our guests!

Welcome to Finland!

Anita