International Cooperation Bridges the Societal Needs’ Skills Gap in Spain

Tutors Finland Oy and Edufication based at South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences have entered into a cooperation agreement to bridge the skills gap in rural areas with the help of digital learning models. Tutors is currently focusing on developing services for societal needs in Spain, and in particular in the rural areas of Spain, where basic social services are not readily available.

“We are committed to executing projects where low-threshold digital services are developed in order to achieve positive social impacts. Our cooperation with Edufication aims to tackle the everyday challenges facing people living in the rural areas of the Serranía de Ronda mountains in Southern Spain”, the CEO of Tutors, Filip Bovin, explains.

“The area and its inhabitants have suffered from particularly severe forest fires lately. The need to support and develop action models for treating crisis situations arose from those experiences. Now we are building a first aid training model to increase the community’s capability to act in emergency situations. First aid training in the mountain villages will support the work of emergency medical services”, Bovin continues.

Several villages in the area are located at the top of a mountain where the winding roads and lack of street lights  make the driving conditions challenging. Also, in these mountain villages the roads and pavements are steep, which makes moving around quite difficult on foot as well. During the rainy winter season there are many people who slip or fall over.

In order to overcome these challenges, Bovin explains that “we aim to increase the local basic first aid knowledge and the capability to administer immediate care in order to stabilize the patient until emergency medical services arrive. Due to the challenging surroundings, it might take a while for help to arrive. Also, these villages don’t even have their own emergency medical unit, which means that it might take up to 30 minutes for an ambulance or helicopter to arrive on the scene”. The population of the villages is also aging, as Bovin continues “one could describe the villages as being on the verge of extinction, as the population decreases, and young people move to cities. Services have been cut and so we need to come up with new solutions”.

Finnish technology, local content and guidance

In addition to the Edufication and Tutors teams, the cooperation project is fueled by the expertise of Dr. Francisco Moya, who is the Clinical Lead of the International Services Department and a Consultant in Emergency and Sport and Exercise Medicine at Vithas Xanit International Hospital in Malaga, Spain. Other local experts are consulted during the process as well. 

“We will implement an international hybrid model of learning development between Finnish and Spanish experts. Edufication offers expertise and support in online pedagogy and learning design, and the end product is created locally in Spain. Tutors and the Spanish medical experts produce the course contents and make sure they follow the local medical and legal rules and regulations”, states project manager Pekka Pulkkinen from Edufication.

“We make it possible for people to study the high-quality learning content, regardless of time or place. Our material is delivered on an engaging and interactive online learning platform. Studying online makes it possible for the learners to prepare for contact teaching, as well as revisiting the material when ever they want, in case there was something they didn’t understand the first time”, Pulkkinen continues.

For Tutors, the key elements of the project are focused around helping the community by establishing operations locally and enabling skills development in the area. “In general, there’s a high demand for digital services locally. Companies need help to develop their operations, and services for senior citizens are being remodeled. Most importantly though, the safety and security of the local people must be ensured, and that is a solid starting point for this cooperation”, Filip Bovin reflects.  

Tutors Finland Oy in a nutshell:

Since 2017, Tutors Finland Oy has offered a variety of consulting and expert services for digital development for companies, associations, and citizens in the Costa del Sol area of Southern Spain. Tutors’ expertise lies in the fields of education and the social sector, which has greatly influenced the current communal projects. In the summer of 2019, Tutors kicked off their first low-threshold volunteer program called Street Hockey -Fuengirola (fb.com/streethockey.tutors), which has managed to operate even during the pandemic. For more information, see www.tutors.fi