Meet our new community specialist, Minttu Naarminen!

HYY has been busy with the recruitment of a new community specialist, and we have now managed to add a wonderful new specialist to our work community.

HYY’s Board has appointed Minttu Naarminen as our new community specialist. Naarminen has started in her position in August and is already off to a great start after orientation!

Naarminen’s work as a community specialist consists of coordinating HYY’s training activities, developing volunteer work and providing inspiring, community-based communication. ‘The position is new, and I am eagerly awaiting the challenges of getting to create something new together with our volunteers, employees and members of the Board’, Naarminen explains.

Naarminen has lived in Helsinki for three years now, but she is originally from Central Finland. Before moving to Helsinki, she has also lived and worked in Turku, where she had a long stint working with social policy advocacy work in the Student Union of the University of Turku (TYY). After TYY, she worked as a project manager in the ‘Puhutaan kiusaamisesta!’ (‘Let’s talk about bullying!’) project of Nyyti ry, the mental health organisation of higher education students. Students and their equality, participation and wellbeing are clearly close to her heart.

Naarminen is currently a master’s student at the University of Turku, majoring in folkloristics. In her studies, she has focused on themes related to community wellbeing, and in her thesis, she deals with the experiences of bullying encountered by higher education students.

‘I hope I can do my part to help make it possible for the different parties operating under HYY to grow, learn, get inspired and take part in discussions in various different ways. Strong communities are transparent, tolerate discussion and give space to diversity. HYY’s volunteers constitute the heart of the Student Union, and I am already looking forward to all the things we will get to do together’, Naarminen states enthusiastically.

Coordinating training activities feels like a natural task for an enthusiastic trainer and facilitator like Naarminen. Together with the capable people of the office as well as a group of volunteers, she will start the process of developing our activities so that they will correspond to the needs and desires of the student community even better than they already do.

Naarminen looks after her own wellbeing by spending time in nature. ‘I spend a lot of time in nature with my dog. Nature also helps me recover. During vacation, I like to go surfing whenever possible. The sea is an extremely important element to me.’