Good evening, Hyvaa
iltaa, ladies and gentlemen, naiset ja herrat- thank you for coming tonight. I’d like to express my gratitude to the Burns
Street Bistro for opening their doors to Nordic culture, which brings us to the
core of what we, the Finlandia Foundation of Montana do. We bring cultural
diversity and non-commercial popular culture to Missoula and our start as a
newly established group has been quite fulfilling. It seems that people genuinely
are interested in, so we’ve realized it’s not only our board, who feel the need
to experience Finnishness or something Scandinavian at least a few times a
year. Tonight is clearly dedicated to celebrate Finland's 100 years of Independence.
As we know, Nordic
innovations and knowledge-based economies, cultural trends and Scandinavian design
can be attractive, but more importantly it is the like-minded philosophies and
the values of the social and collective or the idea of cohesive and open
communities that are deep in the Nordic culture and Missoula has already adopted,
but certainly can learn more from the Nordics, for instance, in the areas
of education, healthcare, gender equality maybe even human rights.
This in mind, I
cannot emphasize enough, the Nordic countries are pretty good at “everybody and
together” when it comes to collective impact and co-creation to maximize
potential for equal opportunity. And this is what the community of Missoula
does well too. Like tonight, the Burns Street Bistro, and all of you who are here, showing up without a hesitation, out
of curiosity, or friendly support. I’m very proud to call Missoula home and I strongly
believe our city is fitting to have more of "the Nordic".
And more generally speaking,
cultural events like this are all about making connections and building
relationships no matter where you are from, or where you are, from global to
local, vice versa and everything in between that makes us humans to keep the
peace and to embrace multiculturalism. And that’s what we advocate for. Our
work is completely voluntary, our membership is free and we truly welcome
anybody with a slight interest in what we are doing. We are looking forward to
expanding our network and are very excited to bring Scandinavian Midsmmer party
to town next summer. The Midsummer is a crazy good way to celebrate the summer
solstice.
Lastly, I’d like to
mention one of our community outreach programs called the Montana Baby Boxes. The
Initiative originated from Finland 80 years ago, and several states in the US
have adopted the model, and Montana should not be left behind. We have a sample
baby box here for display, and we thank La Stella Blue, a baby-clothing store here
in town for their generosity. The Montana baby box initiative is a great way to
go about how we can collectively build upon to support our expectant mothers
and their new babies in our community and outside.
But that’s enough
on my part, next I’d like to announce our raffle winners…
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