Bryan Mushi has just graduated from Moshi University College of Cooperative and Business Studies, where he studied micro-financing and enterprise development. He visited Finland last year as part of the Finnish North-South-South Programme called SWAN, which aims to improve social work and education. At the same time, Bryan, another participant from Tanzania, and two participants from Kenya and Ethiopia also visited Finland for two months.
The six participants visited different cities and universities of applied sciences to do their theoretical and practical internships. Based on his studies, Bryan seems an unlikely candidate for social sector exchange, but he thinks his visit to Finland was worthwhile.
This project is very nice, and we need more programs like this. In Tanzania, we have forgotten that social issues should be a priority and welfare should be a key concern. I realised that I need to change from one person to another and think more about social problems, Bryan says.
He was pursuing his theoretical studies in Centria at the business school. He completed his practical internship at the Koivuhaka Family Centre and the Finnish Red Cross second-hand shop, known as Kontti. He found the internship at the family centre challenging due to the language barrier, but he liked working in Kontti as it taught him about social business.
In Koivuhaka, many families from South Sudan spoke only Arabic or Finnish, making communication challenging. In Kontti, we learned how to create displays and perform other shopkeeping-related tasks. We should have similar shops here because maybe I’m tired of my shirt, but someone else might like it. He explained that people could donate the things they no longer needed to support an organisation that was doing good for the community.
I have many things on my mind now when thinking about the future: perhaps I will return to school in a few years, learn First Aid, and volunteer at a refugee camp. We should continue this SWAN Programme and raise more awareness about social issues. Bryan says people need to see how effective social services are, but he is not just thinking about serious issues. He laughs that Finland is a lovely place to be from Thursday to Saturday.
What is the SWAN Programme
SWAN is a Finnish North-South-South exchange programme for Social Work and Social Sciences Africa Network. The project started in June 2014 and is running to the end of 2015. During this time, students and teachers from participating countries and universities have been in exchange programs in different places, learning about each country’s social services at the local level and social sector education.
The main goal of the SWAN project is to improve social work and education in social studies and to build a network of cooperation between higher education institutes, non-governmental organizations, local government, and communities. The main focus of this project is on the welfare of the most vulnerable families and children by empowering them and providing opportunities to participate.
The coordinating university is the Centria University of Applied Sciences, and in Finland, there are eight other Universities of Applied Sciences involved in the project (Jyväskylä, Lapland, Kymenlaakso, Lahti, Laurea, Mikkeli, Savonia and Seinäjoki). In Africa, cooperative universities are Tanzanian Moshi University College of Cooperative and Business Studies, Kenyan Maseno University and Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. Art in Tanzania is an NGO that is participating in the project by offering coordination support and team leadership in Moshi, Tanzania. Moshi Municipality, Community Development and Social Work Department represent local government.
