Project meeting under the Midnight Sun in Lapland
The second DEBUTING project meeting took place in Rovaniemi, Lapland from June 19th to 20th. On the first day we enjoyed the beautiful views at Ounasvaara hill next to Rovaniemi city working with the Steering Committee of the project and learning about intersecitonality, guided by Karlstad University. Our dinner was accompanied by a bunch of reindeer wondering about the woods. At the end of the long but insightful day we took a round around the Ounasvaara hill and sat down in a traditional hut to share our stories from everyones home region - what a perfect way to end the day!
On the 2nd day of our Rovaniemi meeting we focused on the good practices on clusters, smart specialization, gender equality and inclusiveness in Lapland.
Jenni Lintula and Kaarina Mäcklin from the Regional Council of Lapland introduced us to Lapland region and the Smart Specialization Strategy of Lapland, followed by a presentation by Heidi Alariesto, an entrepreneur from Lapland, on building an inclusive and attractive company culture.
Hanna Junttila from Women in Mining Finland presented their work to improve gender equality in the Finnish mining industry and Nafisa Yeasmin shared learnings from Business Ladies, a project that focused in strenghtening the business expertise of migrant women entrepreneurs in Lapland.
In the afternoon Tuomas Pussila presented the arctic industrial and circular economy cluster and at the end of the day we visited FrostBit Software Lab to learn about their work on learning environments in XR, Games and Apps.