Piloting for the "Global Citizen in Finland" Project

Guest lecturers Ms Kristina Ragan, Mr. Raymond Boniface and English teacher Tiina Mustakangas

Haukipudas High School is one of the 16 high schools in Finland which work for the ”Global Citizen in Finland” project funded by the Finnish Board of Education.The aim of Haukipudas High School is to bring international university students to foreign language, psychology, history and philosophy lessons to talk about global issues, such as identity, multiculturalism, cultural differences, racism, voluntary work, human rights, distribution of wealth, UN Millennium development goals, nature, sustainable development, and peace and conflict prevention.

In February 2011, we had the pleasure of having Ms Kristina Ragan from the USA and Mr. Raymond Boniface from Tanzania in four of our English lessons. In those lessons we learned a lot about the African and American culture as well as the cultural differences between Tanzania, the USA and Finland. Our guest lecturers Kristina and Raymond didn’t have to go home empty handed either, as our students introduced them to our Finnish culture and made excellent presentations about Finnish peculiarities, attractions, nature, climate, food and sauna.

In April and May 2011, Kristina came back for two other visits. This time she gave a lecture about the distribution of wealth and the UN Millennium Development Goals. These topics touched all of us, and made us think how lucky and privileged we are compared to many other nations in the world. Since the target year of 2015 for the UN Millennium Goals is getting closer, our students gave reports on seven of the goals. Enclosed the very thorough reports on where we stand with the goals right now, as well as pictures of our hardworking and beautiful students.