Committee mentors help young people understand the political process

For quite some time now, a grandstand view of the city's decision-making bodies has been offered to the youth council members. Two youth councillors have the right to attend the City Council's meetings, and during the last two council periods, the youth council has also had its representatives in each committee. While they naturally do not get involved in the decision-making, they can bring up young people's views and learn how the committees and the Council work.

– Tampere has systematically promoted young people's inclusion and participation in recent years. Today, the youth councillors are also paid a fee for attending a committee or Council meeting, says Deputy Mayor Anne-Mari Jussila (National Coalition Party).

– The chairman of the committee can take a moment to talk about something that interests young people and ask for their opinion about it. In the Education and Upbringing Committee, we recently talked about their early impressions of the mobile phone ban in basic education. The youth council representatives attending the meeting had an opportunity to describe how young people feel about the pros and cons of the ban.

Mentors explain the practices of decision-making

In autumn 2025, individual mentors were appointed in each committee to help the youth council representatives understand the convolutions of decision-making. The mentors are full members of their committees.

– The mentor's job mostly involves chattering. We lower the threshold to political participation. We learn about committee work together with the young people, get to know each other and encounter each other as fellow human beings. The main thing is that the young people have someone who is easy to contact, says City Councillor Juho Hirvelä (Finns Party).

Hirvelä works as the mentor in the Committee for City Planning and Infrastructure Services. He sometimes stays behind after the meeting to talk to the youth council representatives about what they think of the meeting and also what's going on in the world in general.

– It's obvious that young people are interested in the themes discussed in the committee.

As a mentor, Hirvelä hopes he can show the youth councillors that it is possible for people with differing opinions to sit around the same table. While the members sometimes disagree, the committee aims for the common good and seeks the best solution together.

Oliver Priimägi (Social Democrats) adds that the mentors are first and foremost human beings, and party representatives only in second place.

Priimägi is the mentor in the Culture and Leisure Committee. He is a first-term city councillor who previously served as a youth councillor for three years. He knows by experience that getting your head around the committee's work may seem difficult.

– If a young person jumps in at the deep end of the drafting and making of decisions, everything looks really complicated. This is why, as a mentor, I want to be easy for the youth councillors to reach. They can ask me about anything at all, and they have indeed contacted me on the social media. At the meetings I try to keep up a positive spirit and take the youth council representatives into consideration, Priimägi says.

– One of my important tasks is to justify how decisions are made and how a political coalition works.

Mentoring activities widen everyone's horizons

As recently as during the last council term, Priimägi was a youth council representative at the City Council's meetings, and now his seat in the council hall is right next to the youth councillors.

Hirvelä also has personal experience of the youth council. This happened in Kauhajoki at the beginning of the millennium.

– We had our meetings, but the machinery of local government decision-making remained very distant to us. There was no chance of one of us being able to attend council meetings. I still don't even know where the Council of Kauhajoki meets, Hirvelä laughs.

He praises the youth council representatives in the Committee for City Planning and Infrastructure Services for their broad interests. Among other things, discussions about the smooth running of public transport and pride flags have come up.

– These guys really get down to business, and they have strong views. Our discussions broaden our horizons on both sides.