2012 - Building Partnerships, Making Plans

board members: Jari Marjelund (president), Lars Melakoski (vice-president), Sini Ventelä (today: Männistö, vice-president), Tim Backhaus, Jan Bubienczyk, Sini Hyytiäinen, Juuso Kurokallio, Juho Nikko, Marjuska Pennanen (today: Ouramo), Alexander Proctor

After the previous year’s anniversary celebrations, EYP Finland again focused on developing its core activities in 2012. The school tour reached Oulu for the first time, and the year’s Regional Sessions – in Tampere, Salo and Kauniainen – gathered a record number of participants from Finland and abroad. At the start of the year, for the 18th National Session, head-organised by Valpuri Kaarninen and Pauliina Paloviita, we returned to Tampere for a highly successful event (including hotel accommodation) amid freezing cold January temperatures.

To further develop EYP Finland’s delegate selection process, a new delegate evaluation form was created by Juho Nikko, Alexander Proctor and Hammu Varjonen. The new form aimed to incorporate more objective and directly comparable criteria, and it accompanied

the board’s decision to start selecting individual delegates – rather than school delegations – to International Sessions from the 2012 session cycle onward.

Both forming new and developing existing partnerships was one of the successes in 2012 – and an essential stepping stone to further successes. EYP Finland had started its cooperation with the Academy of Finland, the leading funding body for scientific research in Finland, in 2011, and in 2012 the Academy became a national partner of the Your European Citizenship Campaign and the National Session, with leading Finnish researchers supporting our participants in some of their discussions. Another important national partnership was formed with EF – Education First.

EYP Finland remained an organisation with a wide range of activities but relatively limited resources. Thus, in addition to forming significant partnerships, we focused on further developing our long-term capabilities by decreasing the size of the national board to allow more strategic board work, and committing to establishing a central office the following year. Internationally, the year concluded with the European Youth Parliament celebrating its 25th anniversary at its birthplace in Fontainebleau, France, with a number of Finns in attendance.