Experiences of a trainee

Submitted by Henna on

Today is my final day at the Karelia CBC-programme. In the last four months, I have had a unique opportunity to see behind the scenes and to be part of a regional cross-border cooperation programme, something that has taught me a lot. I have been involved in multiple little tasks and projects, ranging from translating old project applications to the organizing of the European Cooperation Day activities, which was very exciting.

Starting my job in June, I thought I had an understanding what kind of work I was going to do in the programme, but I had no idea how different tasks were going to be assigned to me. I certainly did not expect to be thinking how I could make one of the answers to the question “How many other similar cross-border cooperation programmes is Russia involved in?” funny in our light-hearted ECD-online quiz. (In the end, one of the possible answers was “-2”, so you can see that I was a bit desperate.) The diversity in my tasks was something that I really enjoyed in the end, however, because it provided me with opportunities to do plenty of different things and to gain experience from new situations.

Like everywhere else, the global pandemic has had an effect on our job here as well. During June, we were mainly working from home and throughout the summer, multiple events have been organized via Zoom or other distance connections. We were also unable to organize the European Cooperation Day activities as we originally wanted. Instead we had to be creative and create events that were online based and did not require face-to-face contacts. In the end, we created two events to which we were pleased and which received quite well attention, especially in Russia. I myself got a change to tour the Finnish programme region a bit as a part of the other ECD-event we organized, the Project Hunt. I really enjoyed the trip and updating about it to our Instagram account, and you can still find the journey in the biography of our account.

Overall, I truly enjoyed my stay at the Karelia CBC programme a lot. I got a change to learn a lot working with a great team and I would like to thank the Karelia CBC programme for the opportunity to work in the programme. I wish all of you great and safe autumn!

Nuutti