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The letters OULU in pink in front of Tuira, each decorated in honour of the summer and the year of the Capital of Culture.

Front page › news › The regional programme addresses current phenomena

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17.02.2021

The regional programme addresses current phenomena

Preparation of the Regional Programme for Northern Ostrobothnia 2022-2025 continued on Tuesday 16 February 2021 at a strategy workshop coordinated by Regional Development Consultancy MDI. More than 70 participants from different sectors of the region participated. The aim of the workshop was to jointly examine and interpret the situational picture of the region and to identify key fstakeholders of change in the business environment to be taken into account in the regional programme.

Regional Director Pauli Harju welcomed the participants to the Zoom workshop to make the future: “It is time to stop looking for a common will for the future, how the future will be met and how it will be done.” Harju stressed that the regional programme is a common will and the funding programmes are tools to implement this will. The purpose of the regional programme is to emphasise the common future. “When we look at the drivers of environmental change, we can think about how the people of Northern Ostrobothnia work together to make the future.”

The Regional Director highlighted the importance of research and education in balanced development when looking at the future of the region. “We have entered an era of rapid renewal of production activities. Studies and doctrines can now be applied. Performance-related issues are emerging in the regional development debate. Now we need to stop and think about what our will is. How would we do things using mainstreams, but still in our own way?’ Harju invited the participants.

Planning Manager Ilpo Tapaninen emphasises that the regional programme is a compiling programme, and the regional programmes and road maps are utilised in the work. “The crushing of the forces of change approached the phenomenon-based approach. It is clear that the bigger phenomena, to which many of the dossiers relate, are starting to emerge from behind the haze," explained Tapaninen.

The county is in a state of change. MDI raised seven phenomena from the situational picture to speed up the discussion in the workshop:

  • Demographic and employment trends are differentiated in cooperation within the region.
  • In Northern Ostrobothnia, the economy has been in good shape in recent years, but there is still plenty to be gained from regional economic indicators.
  • The dents caused by the coronavirus are on average smaller than in many other regions.
  • A major challenge for young people in the region is the employment of recent graduates.
  • The Northern Ostrobothnia paradox – in cooperation with many experiential indicators of well-being at the top of Finland, but in cooperation with morbidity at the bottom of the counties.
  • The length of business trips has increased, but at the same time Northern Ostrobothnia is at the top of the counties in the development of broadband connections.
  • Greenhouse gas emissions per capita are the highest in Finland, so there is plenty of work to do to mitigate climate change emissions.

Regional Director Pauli Harju said at the end of the workshop: “Now we have to take the bull out of the horns” and reminded us that Northern Ostrobothnia is a happy region. Communality, Participation and Inclusion and new tools help tackle inequality. We are still a region of young people, but we need to use the existing blocks more carefully.

The series of workshops will continue on 25 February 2021, when preliminary selections will be made for the key themes and broader phenomena of the regional programme, on which measures should be targeted in the regional programme.

Keywords:

regional programme, mako

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