This year, Digita employees again voted to choose the Deaconess Foundation’s youth service Vamos as their charity of choice. Vamos is a national organisation that has, for 14 years now, been comprehensively helping young people who are not in education, training or employment. Thanks to donations, Vamos has been able to help young people find help and has expanded its activities into different locations around Finland. Vamos will also be collecting Christmas well-wishes this year, especially for the purpose of supporting young people’s mental health.

What Vamos does in a nutshell

“Here at the Deaconess Foundation’s Vamos, we support young people aged 16 to 29 on their journey to finding employment, education and training on an individual, confidential and comprehensive basis. Our service helps young people in various difficult situations. Every young person we work with is assigned a coach who is given time to get to know them and see them through the entirety of their journey with us”, explains Maarit Lankinen-Kivimäki from Vamos.

According to career coach Maarit Lankinen-Kivimäki, the most important part of the coaching Vamos provides is interacting with young people in an unhurried and respectful way.

“I have been working at Vamos for almost 10 years and have seen how each of our young people has strengths and potential. That can be hard for young people to see in themselves, especially if they have experienced challenges in their life and their self-confidence is down. At Vamos, our coaches, peers and partners support each young person as they discover their strengths and interests and help them shape their journey based on those qualities. I think this work is very important. It’s great to see young people find the energy to drive themselves forward during Vamos coaching”, Lankinen-Kivimäki says.

Many of the young people who receive coaching from Vamos have said that it is the first place where they feel like they are accepted as themselves.

Vamos work has national significance

Vamos relies on donations in order to continue their nationally significant activities and support young people as they move forward in their lives. According to Lankinen-Kivimäki, Vamos work, especially in Lahti and Vantaa, is in need of donations to ensure they can continue to provide young people with the support and coaching they need.

Many young people struggle with challenging life situations and things like mental health problems. “Vamos wants to help young people reinforce their self-confidence, well-being and mental resources. Vamos and the Deaconess Foundation also want to improve the readiness and willingness of Finnish employers and the academic world to welcome partially disabled people”, Lankinen-Kivimäki says.

Vamos places a large emphasis on continuously evaluating and developing the effectiveness of its activities. In 2021, Vamos was named social impact action of the year. During its almost 15 years of activity, Vamos’s services have supported approximately 15,000 young people across Finland. According to Itla’s impactfulness study, young people supported by Vamos are more likely to transition into studies and out of social assistance than other young people in similar circumstances.

Giving young people encouragement and support

Some young people who come to Vamos have barely left home for years, in which case it is important to start with getting their everyday life in order. Some young people at Vamos have been in working life previously but have fallen out for one reason or another. With young people like this, Vamos coaches start by mapping out aspects like their skills, strengths and interests and help them with things like applying for a job or preparing for interviews.

The young people interviewed as part of Itla’s impactfulness study said that Vamos makes an impact by interacting with them, taking an unhurried approach, making them feel accepted and cared for and providing support according to what is needed.

Young people see Vamos as a safe place where they are cared about and accepted for who they are. One young person describes their experiences as follows: “Right now, Vamos is the only place where I can feel comfortable and practice my social skills without pressure. The atmosphere is open and relaxed.”

Supporting Vamos activities

Vamos is constantly paying attention to what is going on in society and to what the blind spots are where support and services for young people are lacking. Currently, Vamos is placing a particularly large emphasis on strengthening the role of young people who act as experts by experience in advocacy work.

Lankinen-Kivimäki sums up the importance of Vamos activities with the following: “Every young person is important, and no one should be left behind. When you support Vamos activities, you are part of an effort to give young people hope, well-being and a path into the future. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your donation.”

You can support Vamos’s young people at www.hdl.fi/hetkinen and www.hdl.fi/yrityslahjoitus

Read the story of a young person who got support from Vamos here: https://www.hdl.fi/hetkinen/erhanin-tarina/