My Tour4Youth journey: Jonna

Long career in the tourism sector drew her in this project

The Tour4Youth program is an international project consisting of project experts from Finland, Estonia and Latvia. One of them is Jonna, a tourism lecturer in Satakunta University of Applied Sciences. Jonna’s long career in the tourism sector and her current role as a lecturer brings an interesting expertise to the project.

Jonna is always interested if there’s a chance to participate in an international project. This project was about things that were important to her, namely employment in the tourism sector and working life skills. She has been teaching these subjects in higher education for a few years, so this project was of interest to her.

Young people need to be given the chance to show their motivation and knowledge

Before her current role at SAMK, Jonna herself worked as a supervisor in the accommodation sector for several years and is therefore familiar with receiving job applications from young people and the potential challenges they face when entering the workplace.

“This project allows us to give each participant the support they need. When young people are looking for a traineeship or a job, we are able to offer them personalized support, in the area that challenges them the most. Some people can practice writing applications, some prepare for a job interview and some benefit from thinking together about what kind of traineeship would be most suitable.“

“We have a lot of young people who are aspiring to enter the industry and have a lot to offer and a lot of knowledge. They just need to be given the opportunity to show it.”

Jonna says she has been surprised by how many companies are involved and are offering traineeships through Tour4Youth project. A good advice that one can apply in their job hunt:

“You have to apply for jobs diligently. Not just in one place, but in several. And trust that the doors to the world of work will open if you put the effort into looking for a job and developing your own skills.”

Tourism sector is international

In Jonna’s opinion we need to continue to assist young people to find employment, so that they know help is available and that the employment is not just up to them. We also need to find measures to help possible employers in offering non-native language speakers employment:

“One of the main priorities here in Finland and in the Satakunta region would be to improve the willingness of employers to take on workers who are learning Finnish. In other words, there should be measures to help employers to take on more of these workers.”

Especially for students, it would be important to create a co-operation between educational institutes and employers:

“It would be good to have a bridge between educational institutions and employers, and an agreed model through which students can access traineeships and thus possibly find employment.”