OUR STORY

Vietnamese in Finland

The first Vietnamese people arrived in Finland 40 years ago in the late 1970s – early 1980s. There are at the moment more than 10.000 Vietnamese in Finland with 2500 in Helsinki, 1600 in Vantaa, 1300 in Espoo. Others living in other cities such as Turku, Oulu, Tampere, etc. 

Over the years, the community has become more diverse. There is an increasingly large number of Vietnamese coming to Finland to work or to study, or because of family ties. People with a Vietnamese background typically work in service, industrial jobs, or in assistive positions. Another fairly common type of employment is entrepreneurship in the restaurants, cleaning and gardening sectors. Nowadays, more and more are seeing Finland as the strong destination for high-quality education and are involved in high-qualifications endeavours, such as the IT and business sector. Many have opened their own start-ups and achieve recognisable results.

Challenges

The Vietnamese people in Finland have integrated very well into the Finnish society and made positive contributions. However, the common challenges are that younger Vietnamese generations do not have many opportunities to get exposed to their original language and culture. There has been no such activities to promote and encourage Vietnamese and Finnish-Vietnamese families to learn about their roots and to get to know others. Usually they spend time at home, seeing relatives or friends. Sometimes there are non-periodic or more special events like Lunar New Year, Full Moon festival organized in the small scale by the Vietnamese community association or other groups. 

A publication by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment of Finland published on 4 June 2019 namely “Nordic Vietnamese. Our community in Finland” by author Kathleen Valtonen also showed that “mother tongue instruction programmes should be resourced more strongly and reinforced alongside the school curricula. Grave problem situations can arise and have arisen when youth gradually lose their mother tongue and communication lines with parents possessing weak Finnish language skills are broken.” and “social interaction is of great importance to Vietnamese people. The pleasure of being with others is an important factor in the settlement process. However, those who have good Finnish friends adapt better to the society, and that individuals without Finnish friends would adapt less easily“. 

BiziVietnam want to create activities for the children so that they get excited, they love and from there they will have motivation to learn and use the language and develop their love for their root culture. We also want to initiate activities for Vietnamese people and Finnish friends to gather for sharing their stories, experience, expertise and helping one another. 

Opportunities

Any challenge holds the opportunity. As a rather “exotic” culture and cuisine to people around Finland that has gained more attention in recent years, there is definitely the opportunity to further promote and share about Vietnam to the locals and internationals. Vietnam is a rising star for tourism and cultural exploration. There are for sure opportunities to further strengthen the Vietnamese cultural footprint and to provide an authentic culture environment for Vietnamese people living here.

Not only a beautiful country for tourism with vibrant culture and excitingly flavourful cuisine, Vietnam is an emerging market for business and cooperation with a massive and young population. There are definitely endless open opportunities for companies seeing Vietnam as the next potential destination for business development. Vietnam opens its doors for foreign companies and corporations. And now the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement has entered into force on 1st August 2020. Finland and Vietnam have established 45 years of diplomatic relationship. The IPP (Finland Vietnam Innovation Partnership Program) which was run for 10 years, ended in 2018 marked a new stage in Vietnam-Finland ties from ODA provision to a mutually beneficial cooperation.

BiziVietnam would like to turn opportunities into actions and make things happen.

BiziVietnam develops programmes and activities to make a “cultural home” for younger Vietnamese generations and Vietnamese community in Finland, to build a cultural bridge opening opportunities for locals and internationals in Finland to learn about Vietnamese language, culture and other aspects of the Vietnamese lifestyle, to connect and promote cooperation opportunities between Finland and Vietnam.

People behind the story