Folks from Finland, MN have a history of traveling to Palo, MN for the Finnish sliding festival: Laskiainen! Early in 2020, before the pandemic caused so much disruption in our lives, a group of folks from Finland and Silver Bay loaded up on buses and traveled together to Laskiainen. But the festival was canceled in 2021, and in 2022 it was very abbreviated and didn’t have any sliding or vendors. Now we are excited to announce that Laskiainen will return in 2023, and North Shore Age to Age is planning to get buses and provide a ride for local folks who want to attend! Laskiainen is a mid-winter Finnish cultural festival with sliding and craft demonstrations at the Loon Lake Community Center in Palo, MN. This is the 85th annual! The Finland Community Youth Program is partnering up with North Shore Age to Age and North Shore Area Partners for…
Teen Camp Finland is a week-long overnight camp in Mid June for local teens based out of the Community Center in Finland, MN. We focus on love of nature, discovery, friendship, self worth and leadership. We’re looking for 2 self motivated people to help coordinate Teen Camp in 2023 and moving forward into the future. The job is part-time, spread out between January and July 2023 and will require around 160 hours of work at $19/hr. Kids Camp Finland is a week long day camp also in Mid June based out of the Community Center in Finland, MN. There is a strong focus on art, friendship and outdoor games. Again we’re looking for 2 self motivated people to help coordinate Kids Camp in 2023 and moving forward into the future. The job is part-time, spread out between January and July 2023 and will require around 100 hours of work at…
2022 has felt like a “normal” year, or at least, “more normal” than 2020 and 2021. The Clair Nelson Center was used for regular weekly activities throughout this year with only occasional modifications or cancellations due to COVID concerns. Most importantly, we were able to have Youth Night almost every Thursday this year, and we were able to have both Kids Camp and Teen Camp for a week-long experience in June. We also had Spanish Camp over three days in August. The Finland Farmers Market was record-breaking once again, the Food Chain did a lot of fine work, and the Wild Rice House had their first real processing season. We wrapped up the year with an amazing leadership training weekend that was attended by 17 of our staff and board members, 4 Finland community and other local organization folks, 2 who are Finland community connected, 5 from elsewhere (including Nebraska…
Our featured volunteer for 2022 is Cheri Bischoff for her many years of good work organizing the St Urho’s Day parade! Cheri took over organizing the parade from Carol Youngberg and has done a great job with it for over 10 years. After putting in her time herding all of those cats…err, parade floats, she is now looking forward to watching the parade with her grandkids and family. Never fear, our parade will be in good hands. Tina Buus will take over organizing the parade this year for the 48th Annual on Saturday March 18th, 2023. The theme will be St Urho ‘23 and Me. Contact Tina at 612.327.6925 to register for the parade. In related news, we lost Elwood Youngberg in June of 2022, and Carol Youngberg in November 2022. Both of them were outstanding people who dedicated a lot of time and energy to our local communities, and…
It was another incredible summer season for the Finland Farmers Market. This summer it became very apparent that the market is growing and reaching more and more people in the area! We had record attendance this year. After crunching some numbers, it’s been determined that over 1600 people came and enjoyed music and food here at the Clair Nelson Center over the summer. Many of those people took advantage of the “triple your money up to $10” SNAP benefits that were available to spend with local producers thanks to the GUSNIP grant that made those funds possible throughout the whole state of Minnesota. This year over $1,625.00 was spent in EBT at the market, and with some of that being tripled with produce and market bucks, that means over $2,200 extra was given out to SNAP customers to spend with local farmers! What an awesome program! A record number of…