One of my personal projects during my European voluntary service was the Finnish corner. Finnish corner took place in the local primary school Osnovna šola Toneta Okrogarja in Zagorje ob Savi, Slovenia. The Finnish corner is a quiz for the students where the theme of the questions was Finland.

The idea for the Finnish corner I got from one of the English teachers in the school. She has experience to have foreign volunteers in the school and the corner was a new idea to connect the students to the country where the volunteer comes from.

Every week I made a new poster where was one question about Finland in English. The topic changed every week. I took the questions from different areas such as sports, food, history, culture and geography. The poster was put on the wall in the hallway next to the English class room and under it there was also a box, where the students could put their answer into. After the week I checked the answers, announced the winner in the school radio and the winner got something sweet as a reward.

First times there wasn’t so many participants but as the weeks went by more and more students put their answers in the box. After two months the students started to compete with each other and tried to win the quiz.

I think the Finnish corner was successful and it brought myself more close to the kids. I could imagine myself to do the corner again in the future and also the English teacher from the school told me she will continue this with new volunteers.

Tessa Kuorelahti