Financed by the Funding Centre for Social Welfare and Health Organizations (STEA), The Alzheimer Society of Finland’s project on culturally sensitive memory work has entered its final year. As Finnish society is becoming more and more multicultural, the project aims to further open up to working with migrant clients and volunteers and involves changing staff’s attitudes and encouraging self-reflection. During training and workshops, staff are encouraged to question assumptions and address the risk of stereotyping, thus effectively reimagining the encounter between staff and migrant clients. Particular focus has also been on recruiting and training migrant volunteers and understanding them as a vast unused resource in the voluntary sector. These volunteers are spreading information on dementia prevention in their own mother tongues to their own communities.
They also carry out concrete tasks like visiting people with dementia from minority ethnic groups. Whilst receiving training through the project, their greatest value quite often lies in sharing the same language and birth culture as the person with dementia. Cooperation with migrant organisations has been key to reaching many of these volunteers. Building up that trust base can sometimes rightfully take time, but once established, the benefits for both sides have been remarkable. Various regional society members have adopted migrant volunteers, thus laying groundwork for lasting change. The Alzheimer Society of Finland, as an umbrella organisation, has codified diversity in its official strategy. Work is ongoing to ensure that learnings from the project gradually find their way into day-to-day activities and client encounters.