Junior Achievement Finland offers services and study packages that support working life, economics, and entrepreneurship skills for schools, educational institutions, and municipalities. The goal is that every child and young person, regardless of their starting point, gets the opportunity to learn skills that are important for their future. JA contributes to strengthening the capabilities of children and young people for the needs of a changing working life, managing their own everyday life, and recognizing their own strengths.
Saastamoinen Foundation is involved with significant support when JA Finland launches a service path covering the entire elementary school and secondary level across Finland in the years 2022-24.
With the help of the service path, every young person learns to recognize their own strengths, gets excited about their future and is encouraged to pursue their dreams. In addition to financial, working life and entrepreneurship skills, the service path strengthens the feeling of inclusion and encourages young people to work for a more equal and sustainable society. JA Finland has more than 260 Finnish municipalities as partners.
JA’s Yrityskylä is a Finnish learning module that has received an award as the best education innovation in the world. Yrityskylä provides 6th and 9th graders with positive experiences about working life, the economy, entrepreneurship, and society.
The Saastamoinen Foundation is a long-term and important partner of Yrityskylä learning environment for sixth-graders (Yrityskylä Primary School). The learning environment is the schoolchildren's own society, a miniature city that simulates the functioning of society and the role of various actors in the national economy. In the Yrityskylä Primary School, the student works in his own profession and gets paid for the work s/he does. In addition, the student act as a consumer and citizen as part of Finnish society. Yrityskylä Primary School learning environments can already be found in 10 locations and more than 50,000 sixth graders visit them each year. Funding from the Saastamoinen Foundation also supports the expansion of Yrityskylä to new areas, so that even more students feel that they have acquired the knowledge and skills to succeed in working life.
The national support of the Saastamoinen Foundation in 2022-24 is implemented through a functional station called artLAB in every Yrityskylä Primary School. artLAB offers versatile art and cultural experiences for sixth graders. At artLAB's art center, students can admire virtual art or become artists themselves if they wish. In the Yrityskylä, artLAB is a meeting place for people interested in creative fields, where everyone can unleash their creativity. A cultural producer, an experience guide, and an artist work at artLAB station. At artLAB, Pinktwins' media artwork Paranometronomicon is on display, inspired by the students who can create their own three-dimensional digital artwork with a great VR application.
The foundation's funding also enables the operation of Espoo Museum of Modern Art EMMA in Yrityskylä Espoo and the Saastamoinen Foundation Art Museum in Yrityskylä in Eastern Finland. Museums are part of Yrityskylä's miniature society. ArtLab station works in these Yrityskylä learning environment in connection with miniature museums. In the miniature museums, the museum director and the museum employee plan the exhibition and the opening for the other students working in Yrityskylä during the day. Guided tours are also organized during the day and works are lent to other companies in Yrityskylä.
Photo: Lauri Rotko, Me & MyCity, elementary school at Technology museum in Viikki