Finnish Visit to Dumfries and Galloway June 2011

Rural Dumfries & Galloway LEADER played host to a group of visitors from Finland recently.

The group of four youth work practitioners have been in discussions with the local LEADER programme regarding a potential joint project between the two areas and decided that they would like to see the region for themselves.

Their particular interests were how young people engage with their local community, how they get involved in decision making and how they become more active within their community. LEADER having engaged with many youth related projects over the course of the current programme had many examples of young people being active in the community to share with the Finnish visitors.

Nicola Hill, Field Officer for LEADER in Dumfries & Galloway said "we are delighted to be given the opportunity to show how our young people in Dumfries & Galloway are proactively getting involved in improving the quality of life in their communities. We have many examples of good practice to share with our fellow European LEADER colleagues and we hope they have taken home some inspiring ideas from the region."

The group visited with a number of LEADER supported projects across the region including Port William Youth Centre, the Moorland Education Project and Xcel Project both in Langholm and the Queensberry Initiative project in Thornhill, finishing their busy week's visit with a meeting at the Scottish Parliament building with local MSP's Alex Fergusson, Elaine Murray and Aileen McLeod.

Marita Mattila said "We are very impressed with the Scottish professionals' work in the sector of Youth services.  Also it's quite surprising to see, how much of the youth work is done by volunteers. All the projects we visited are making very fine results, and also making young peoples' life more meaningful in Dumfries & Galloway. "