Talko – a tradition of helping others

Talko is a word that means voluntary, unpaid work, done by a community to assist neighbours, friends, relatives and others. Talko can be anything from building a house to taking turns tending the yard of a sick neighbour. The concept implies that talko is in some sense collective, usually conducted in a larger group and for a limited period. In return, the talko host, the one who asked for help, usually offers food or coffee after the work is done.

During the training week in Corsica, the Finnish group chose to make a book about the talko and the social game around talko as it can be experienced in a village in Finland. 

The talko is an opportunity for villagers to meet. There are many unwritten rules and preconceived notions about who does what on a talko, e.g. the talko is usually based on the assumption that older people know better than younger people and that women are better at making coffee than men. An important topic of conversation in most talkos is who is related to whom. 

Even though attending a talko on a day off perhaps not always is that appealing in the end it is always nice to work together, meet friends and relatives and do something good for someone else. 

With this in mind, Finnish youngsters Frida, Fabian and Felix, all from the village of Petalax in Finland, created a book in which the whole Finnish team dramatized possible events at a talko. They also taught readers key phrases one will always hear at a talko such as "That´s the way we always have done" and "Then we are related!”