In December we hosted 14 Italian students and two teachers in Finland. During their stay we did quite a bit of sightseeing in Helsinki, but of course also some serious project work. During their stay we approached the theme of gender equality through three main topics: sports, media and entertainment. We visited the headquartes of the biggest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, where we joined a lecture about gender equality in the media. At the end of the project we gave presentations on the topics that we had studied during this interesting week. Moreover, we presented some of the differences between Italy and Finland when it comes to gender equality.

When the Italians were here, we discussed a lot of topics related to human rights and equality. At the beginning we had some challenges with the project work because we noticed that we weren't exactly on the same level of awareness with them. By this I mean that in Finland we have already been talking about the third gender for quite a while whereas in Italy most students hadn't even heard about it. On the other hand, I also noticed that there is a lot of work to do in all European countries in order to enable equal rights for everyone regadless of religion, gender and race.

During this amazing week my English got more fluent. The funniest thing about the project week was making new friends - both in other European countries and in Finland. Everytime we spent time together we had so much fun and everyone participated energetically in all the activities we had organied. I would say that the best experience was the visit to lake Kuusiärvi where we went to sauna and swam in the frozen lake. The Italians really enjoyed going to sauna and they would have liked to continue that until the late night. They were actually able tu endure the freezing cold water better than the Finns!

To sum up, the project week was extremely rewarding and fruitful, and I am really looking forward to our visit in Germany and the possibility to continue working on this project and promoting gender equality.

Written by: Ella Hörkkö (17 years)