HAMK’s Mona-Anitta Riihimäki to be the expert face of the EU’s anniversary campaign – the only one from Finland
Mona-Anitta Riihimäki, Dean, School of Biotechnology and Natural Resources at Häme University of Applied Sciences, has been selected by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the European Commission as one of the faces of the EU’s TAIEX anniversary campaign. A total of 30 people from all over the world were selected for the programme.
TAIEX (Technical Assistance and Information Exchange) is a programme managed by the European Commission and launched in 1996 that provides short-term expert support for administrative development, especially to the EU’s partner countries. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the programme, a total of 30 experts from around the world have been named as the faces of the “30 faces of TAIEX” anniversary campaign. One of those selected is Mona-Anitta Riihimäki, Dean, the School of Biotechnology and Natural Resources at Häme University of Applied Sciences. She has worked as an expert at a seminar on sustainable forestry organised by TAIEX and the Paraguayan State Administration and the Paraguayan Delegation to the EU in the summer of 2024.
According to Mona-Anitta Riihimäki, the TAIEX cooperation has shown how education, sustainability and investments can be combined so that the green transition produces jobs, inclusion and sustainable growth.
“European expertise, especially Finnish and HAMK, supports people-driven and lasting impacts in partner countries while opening up new opportunities for EU companies. We do not cooperate with ready-made answers, but train changemakers. They pass on sustainability expertise to young people. For us, it is the core of sustainable education and the handprint that we want to leave,” says Riihimäki.
Investments are sustainable when combined with skills development, local ownership and public sector leadership. The cooperation communicates Europe’s role as a partner in fair and sustainable development and boils down to the idea that transnational cooperation builds sustainable education in the future. HAMK wants to be strongly involved in this.
“It has been an honour to be part of the TAIEX community. Cooperation is peer learning,” Riihimäki says.
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