The workshop serves as a meeting place where young people can fix their own vehicles, meet friends, and spend time together. It is intended to be a safe place for youth to meet up because there is an adult from the local youth activities program always present. The youth leaders have expertise in workshop and repair work, providing young people with great opportunities to either discover a new interest or further develop their skills in an existing hobby.
Opening of the workshop has been warmly welcomed because there has been demand for such a place for a long time. “This would have been great to have during my own youth,” says Fredrik Jonsson, one of the workshop leaders.
Dennis Eneslätt, chairman of Pajala’s youth activities, was the driving force behind the workshop project and is now one of its leaders. The idea for the workshop emerged from a previous intense discussion in Pajala about youth driving A-tractors.
Opening event of the workshop gathered a group of young people together. The most enthusiastic ones started repairing work right away. There is a clear interest in learning how to fix vehicles, many of the youth already have previous experience in fixing their vehicles. New workshop encourages them to continue developing fixing skills because the workshop offers more space and a greater selection of tools to carry out larger projects.
The workshop is open whenever an adult can be present. The workshop group have their own Snapchat group where youth leaders and young people stay in touch and decide when to meet. The flexible opening hours allows repair works according to needs. Dennis Eneslätt and Fredrik Jonsson sees that this system works well for keeping in contact with the youth and running the workshop in a flexible way.
According to Pajala’s municipal board chairperson, Birgitta Rantatalo, the donation has been a great help to the municipality. Rantatalo says that the municipality now has better opportunities to support free time activities for children and young people in the area. Rantatalo hopes that the youth activities will strengthen the young people’s connection to their hometown and inspire them to return to Pajala after their studies.
The support for the workshop accounted for half of the annual Christmas donation distributed to benefit children and youth at Tapojärvi’s operational locations. The other half of the donation was allocated by the municipality to Pajala’s village associations, which also play an important role in organizing sports activities for children and young people in the area.
