French apprentices having work placement experience in Finland
A group of French apprentices stayed memorable two weeks in Turku region companies. Nova Talent provided turnkey activity with all arrangements from host companies to apartments and transportation. The group was provided three apartments in very same building in Turku. Flats were located with bus commuting distance from the work places, some were closer some took a bit longer to get there. Nova Talent pre-purchased two weeks bus tickets for the whole group and I would say internationally quite fresh youngsters got very familiar with using the local bus and seeing City of Turku from many perspectives. It also requires responsibility to get to the company at right time in foreign country.
Local companies were happy for young apprentices' motivation and interest for work. Some language barriers were there to overcome, but practical work procedures are quite universal. Nova Talent collected the feedback from local companies point of view. According to feedback youngsters brought fresh ideas for work and familiar things were seen from new perspective. Also local workers were able to practice their English skills and in some cases there communication was seen that good level that there was not always even need for common language. To have work placement period in Finland needs basic English skills for daily communication.
Nova Talent have been focused strongly to technical sector companies when it comes to work placements. This group gave opportunity to get familiar with hairdressing-, bakery- and butchery sectors. So in future your organisation can easily request work placements for those sectors too. Erasmus+ procedures are working of course in same way as well as informing and introducing the idea of hosting to local companies.
French got so exited about hockey game TPS - Tappara, that they want it to do it once again, so they attended two hockey games during the two week period! Maybe hockey is so close to rugby, with that comparison that in Finnish version you have skates and ice!