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  25 November 2008

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Meeting with Stefan Wallin

The minister of culture and sports, Stefan Wallin met FÖSS on Monday 10.11 at the Centre of continuing education at Åbo Akademi, where FÖSS now has its office.

Those who were present at the meeting, were chair person Pirjo Hoffström, secretary Kristin Mattsson, Anne-Maija Kivimäki, Eelin Hoffström and Magnus Hoffström from FÖSS, EU expert Teija Raninen as well as training director Nina Söderlund of the Archipelago Institute at Åbo Akademi and Martin Öhman from the Nordic council of ministers' archipelago cooperation.

We presented two initiatives to Mr Wallin: The first one is a wish that the municipalities' financial support for the archipelago is earmarked and exclusively reserved for the islands which lack permanent road connection with the mainland. The other initiative is that our organization should get annual financing from the state budget for the salary of a secretary.

We had an interesting discussion with Wallin about these issues and he promised that he will discuss the possibility of receiving continuing money with the chairperson of the archipelago delegation, Mikaela Nylander. The letter to Wallin can be read here.

Our intitiatives to Minister Stefan Wallin are available in Swedish (Initiativ till minister Stefan Wallin) and Finnish (Aloitteita ministeri Stefan Wallinille).

Meeting of Swedish-speaking countryside actors
– FÖSS partipicated

After a two years break representatives from the bilingual action groups and regional village associations (Varsinais-Suomen Kylät ry – Egentliga Finlands Byar rf, Svenska Österbottens Byar rf, Västnylands Byar rf and Östra Nylands Byar rf) gathered in Tampere. Now the group was expanded with the addition of Svenska Temagruppen (SveT) that is involved in countryside development, POP which drives Leader-like action in towns and the National Association of Finnish Islands (FÖSS).

During the November 13 meeting the founding of new regional countryside associations was discussed. Instead of keeping many associations it was suggested that a variety of associations with an interest of countryside issues should unite into one association.

We were also discussing the Countryside general program and Swedish-language cooperation regions. Among other issues we discussed the founding of Swedish-language cooperation regions between Leader and regional village associations. We decided to initialize a new youth project among the bilingual Leader groups. In order to do that, we put together a working team.

The next "Tampere-meeting" is planned to be held in the beginning of next year.

Additional information

FÖSS, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FINNISH ISLANDS

Secretary
Kristin Mattsson

040 5684 870 (intl +358 40 5684 870)

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