Young Sicilians visit Salamajärvi National Park in search of ideas for theme tourism

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By Tapio Mainio in Kivijärvi
     
      Two swans swimming in the Iso-Koirajärvi lake cast a disdainful eye in the direction of a campfire by the shore, where a group of loud youths are preparing a mushroom stew.
      The vocational school students from Caltanissetta in Sicily have arrived in the Salamajärvi National Park to learn about nature-based tourism.
     
As their guides, the Sicilians have teachers and students from the nearby Järviseutu Vocational Institute (JAMI), some of whom they already met in the summer, when the Finns studied for a month at a vocational school in Sicily.
      Likewise, the Sicilians are now spending a month in the Southern Ostrobothnia region in Western Finland.
      “For the past five years already, our students have been visiting Estonia. This year three girls from the Estonian island of Hiiumaa, in turn, have come to study green building with us”, JAMI principal Vesa Koivunen explains.
      According to Koivunen, this year’s Sicilian connection was found almost by accident.
     
“It is amazingly quiet here in the outdoors, and also the Finns are quite shy and quiet”, says an astonished Miriam di Cristima, who studies the tourism industry with the Istituto Tecnico Agrario (lower-level agricultural technical college) in Caltanissetta.
      Di Cristima looks on as teacher Petteri Karvinen - assisted by some students - cuts up mushrooms by the fire.
      “Ringed boletus (Suillus luteus), cep - or porcini to you Italians (Boletus edulis), copper brittlegill or brick-red russula (Russula decolorans), and gypsy mushroom (Cortinarius caperatus)”, Karvinen lists.
      “Would tomato picking suit as an activity for theme tourists?” Giuseppe Graci asks. He dreams of starting a farm tourism business. Graci’s family owns a fruit farm in Licata, Sicily.
      Graci hopes to find ideas from the Finnish theme tourism that he could take back and apply in his home region.
     
“The Finns also have a lot to learn from the Sicilian farm tourism. There every farm has some concrete form of production going on, and some kind of product of their own, whether it be goat’s cheese, wine, or olive oil”, Aleksi Kinnunen explains.
      Kinnunen familiarised himself with agro-tourism in the Caltanissetta region and lived in a dormitory at a local vocational college.
      Both the JAMI and the Caltanissetta agricultural technical college students have also been working on a related video film that will be utilised in education later on.
      “We are fascinated by the Finnish practice-orientated teaching method. We, too, should make more visits to local businesses”, teacher Maria Angela Polizzi says.
      “If nothing else, international connections teach us tolerance and acceptance of differences”, says teacher Kari Peltola, who accompanied the JAMI students on their visit to Sicily.
     
Last year 11 per cent of Finland’s vocational school students spent part of their study time abroad. In all there were 5,300 of them, more than half of whom spent a minimum of three weeks in another country.
      The most popular countries were Estonia, Sweden, and Spain.
     
In exchange, 2,500 foreign vocational school students came to Finland.
      CIMO (the Centre for International Mobility) coordinates and administers scholarship and exchange programmes and is responsible for implementing nearly all EU education, training, culture and youth programmes at the national level. CIMO also promotes and organises international trainee exchanges such as the one between Caltanissetta and JAMI.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 20.9.2009


Links:
  Salamajärvi National Park
  Järviseutu Vocational Institute (JAMI)
  Caltanissetta (Wikipedia)
  CIMO, Centre for International Mobility

TAPIO MAINIO / Helsingin Sanomat
tapio.mainio@hs.fi