A child- and youth-friendly Espoo with functional learning pathways
SFP in Espoo aims to:
- Ensure the Swedish learning pathway from early childhood education to upper secondary school and vocational education in Swedish.
- Preserve a comprehensive school network.
- Provide a safe school environment and safe routes to school for everyone, ensuring pedestrian-friendly planning and construction.
- Introduce diverse language teaching and light-weight immersion starting in preschool.
- Offer language immersion programs in various parts of Espoo, from daycare through comprehensive school, while encouraging schools to promote language learning.
- Foster collaboration across linguistic boundaries between schools.
- Renovate and expand the Mattliden school buildings and establish a cultural hub on the premises as a meeting spot for Espoo residents.
- Guarantee high-quality municipal and outsourced services for children and youth.
- Support entrepreneurship education for young people.
- Ensure access to general upper secondary education and attractive, high-quality vocational training. Increase the number of study places in upper secondary institutions to lower admission thresholds for Espoo’s high schools.
- Strengthen schools’ role in preventing social exclusion and bullying.
A thriving Espoo
SFP in Espoo aims to:
- Promote young people’s well-being by investing in meaningful spare-time activities and hobbies.
- Increase youth services in Swedish, such as more Swedish-language youth centers.
- Ensure that seniors’ needs for services, housing, and meeting places are met.
- Commit to long-term and systematic efforts to promote health and well-being.
- Enable people of all ages to engage in physical activity in their local environment.
This includes a wide range of options, from sports fields, gyms, swimming pools, and trails for walking, skiing, running, or cycling, to recreational areas accessible to people with disabilities. - Complete the Espoo Waterfront Walkway (Rantaraitti – Strandpromenaden).
- Ensure access to coastal areas for residents, enabling activities like kayaking, boating, and swimming.
- Preserve the infrastructure around Espoo’s approximately 20 marinas for recreational and sailing boats, including winter storage facilities.
- Acknowledge the third sector’s role in promoting well-being and participation, and strengthen opportunities for community activities.
- Make Espoo a safe and pleasant city.
- Integrate the prevention of violence—both physical and psychological—in close relationships into municipal work, alongside services for victims.
- Prevent social exclusion across all age groups.
- Counter gang formation.
- Combat substance abuse.
- Promote inclusive, cross-linguistic, and cross-departmental collaboration in the city’s social programs.
- Ensure access to social and healthcare services in both national languages. Collaborate with the welfare region to secure these services.
- Inform residents about the location of nearby civil defense shelters.
An inclusive and multicultural Espoo
SFP in Espoo aims to:
- Make Espoo free from racism.
- Offer integration services in both national languages equally, based on clients’ needs and preferences.
- Develop an effective Swedish-language integration pathway, aiming for 5–10% of immigrants to integrate in Swedish.
- Allow integration to occur with one primary national language, supplemented by learning the basics of the other national language.
- Combat segregation and actively include immigrants.
- Engage the third sector in the city’s integration efforts.
- Actively support the integration of people arriving in Finland on work permits.
A financially stable and competitive Espoo
SFP in Espoo aims to:
- Making Espoo an attractive city for entrepreneurship.
- Securing a good level of services with stable finances and high employment.
- Positioning Espoo as Finland’s leading innovation city, offering services and opportunities for startups and international companies.
- Urban planning and land use that support entrepreneurship and business.
- Scrutinizing major infrastructure projects to ensure ecological and economic sustainability.
- Running employment services more effectively, given the municipality’s increased responsibilities. Espoo should actively manage employment offices and reduce youth and long-term unemployment.
- Creating structures and conditions for the establishment of new businesses and jobs.
- Utilizing the vast potential among new residents by ensuring immigrants are offered jobs that match their skills and education, rather than merely filling labor shortages.
- Avoiding tax increases as a long-term solution for balancing the economy.
A climate-smart and environmentally friendly Espoo
SFP in Espoo will work for:
- Sustainability and livability in urban planning and construction, considering city planning, street layouts, building materials, and energy use.
- Designing diverse areas with a variety of housing types, maintaining livability and access to nature.
- Respecting the character of neighborhoods when planning infill development.
- Preserving natural areas in urban planning to ensure nature is accessible to residents.
- Establishing functional, flexible public transportation and providing parking spaces for cars, bikes, and electric scooters near transit stations.
- Expanding the coverage area of city bikes.
- Introducing clear regulations concerning electric scooters in Espoo.
- Strengthening biodiversity by creating more meadows and actively combating invasive species.
- Promoting cleaner waterways and reducing the burden on the Baltic Sea.
- Actively maintaining Espoo’s approximately 95 lakes, such as Björnviken (fi. Otsolahti), where water quality has deteriorated the past 20 years.
- Establishing a “Sortti Station” in southern Espoo for recycling and waste management.
- Ensuring adequate transportation infrastructure for Espoo’s rapid growth.