With Integrify, the City of Helsinki benefits big time
Helsinki has partnered with Integrify to teach web development to unemployed immigrants and connect them with work.
Immigrants left behind
From an interview with Ilkka Haahtela, the Head of Immigration and Employment Affairs for the City of Helsinki, he said,
“We have some really talented immigrants in Helsinki but they can’t show their skills because they can’t speak our language.”
Due to the lack of Finnish language skills and other biases, many talented, capable, and educated immigrants are left doing low paying jobs. Even 47% of immigrants are working below their education level (Statistics Finland, 2018)
This can lead to
- increase in public spending,
- loss tax revenue,
- more registered job seekers
- lengthy integration periods and
- a strain on social cohesion.
Finland has a reserve of people who are eager, passionate and skilled and the aim of the partnership between the City of Helsinki and Integrify is to take advantage of that” or something like that.
What Integrify can do for cities like Helsinki
Cities across the world are increasingly partnering with companies to tackle societal challenges and the results are often positive.
According to Haahtela,
“With Integrify, we benefit twice.”
The City of Helsinki benefits from a partnership with Integrify by,
- decreasing unemployment costs
- decreasing integration costs,
- increasing income tax
- closing the gap between tech companies and their need for talented developers
- sustaining social welfare
This type of partnership, between Integrify and cities like Helsinki, has an enormous potential to educate a substantial amount of immigrants to become developers.
How cities can improve integration
After the refugee crisis of 2012, Finland and Europe have struggled to integrate immigrants, all the meanwhile suffering a skill shortage across the continent.
Integrify training program is retraining immigrants to fill that skilled worker shortage across Finland and decrease integration periods.
From the pilot with Helsinki, other city leaders should be encouraged to reach out to Integrify and create partnerships to better help their immigrant residents and their cities.
If you are an interested municipality or public entity that wants to improve the lives of foreign-born citizens, decrease public spending, increase labor market participation, and cut integration costs, reach out to us.
Keep your eyes peeled for more from Integrify!
