Tiny Maerschalk hopes to build a strong international community in Ã…rhus

6 quick with Tiny

“Symbolically, it makes damn good sense I’d find her here,” I thought as I walked through the doors of Toldboden, the old customs house in Aarhus Harbor, earlier this week. “The taxman is always sitting at the front of the welcome wagon.”

No taxman here, though. My target was Tiny Maerschalk, a Belgian who followed her heart to Denmark nearly a dozen years ago and decided to stay.  Tiny has now taken the reigns of an interesting project called International Community a long overdue initiative backed and funded by a consortium of equally interesting bedfellows.

This is a huge international communications undertaking, and one that is only going to get bigger - in spite of the ups and downs of the financial markets. I spent some time talking with Tiny, and here are her 6 shots

What is this all about? Who is behind it and where does the money come from?

There is essentially a three-pronged constellation, and that is one of the things that makes this unique. The municipality is involved, as is Erhverv Århus (a regional business council) and The University of Aarhus and especially, Vestas was one of those that wanted to make this happen.  In addition, we have now got other big firms like Terma and Danisco on board.  This is quite important because we have public life, the private sector and the larger council represented within the network.
The companies have contributed with both money and resources and we have also applied for funds from RegionMidt (the county) and the European Social fund, which we are waiting to hear from. We definitely have enough money for the next three years and it is without doubt that it will continue after that, of course, once people see how much value this gives.

Is there really a need for this? How do you know? How many foreign workers are we talking about in Ã…rhus?

The problem is that companies and the higher education institution are not good at registering these workers and there has been no single place they can meet.  So the scope is difficult.  We have an estimate that there are 1000 employees and we are forcasting an increase of 60 percent in the coming three years,  These are employees at companies, PhD students and professors teaching at the universities.
Add to that the need for people like you and me who have come here to Denmark without being recruited, but have a higher education and ambitions of contributing and building a good life here. This means our target group has broadened and it is tough to get an idea of exactly how many

Why has it taken so long to get something like International Community in place?

It is tough to say why, but in general, there has been a big demand for workers in Denmark and more and more businesses are working with foreigners. We know that.  A study from Global Relocation Trends in 2005 showed that 67 percent of failed international employments are the result of their spouse not feeling welcome. That is not just in Denmark, but everywhere in the world. This is costly for a company who hires employees and then they leave after a year when they were expecting a 3 year commitment.
The thing that is quite striking here is that companies like Vestas and Terma, who normally competitors for qualified engineers, have found out that it is necessary to recruit to welcome and maintain these workers together.  So they work together to attract people to the region and then compete to attract them to their workplace.

What do you want to do in the first year?

There are 3 concrete things.
First we have to gather information about what it means to be a foreign worker in Denmark. What are the Practical matters and in which order do you take care of them and make the chaos level as low as possible.
We will focus on ensuring better integration at work - meaning that every foreign employee from the day they arrive should have a mentor.  We are putting together courses about what the Danish workplace is like and trying to make sure people understand the intricacies of Danish work life - which are significantly different from other places in the world.
Finally, and probably most challenging is integration in local society.  When you look at the number of hours someone sleeps, works and does the practical things in life - it means there are, roughly speaking, only 3 hours left in the day.  These three hours mean a lot, and are crucial for feeling you are part of society. When you get part of that you understand a big part of Danish social life. Danes are very social network oriented, almost tribal, whereas in a lot of other countries socializing happens at a barbeque or at the pub, but that is not the fact in DK.  You are colleagues between 8 and 4 and everyone goes home to their own life and that makes it quite difficult.
A big part of the last point is making sure spouses are also taken care of.   In the best case, even getting those spouses to help fill the holes in the workforce. Companies usually attract and employ one person, but without knowing they attract 2 potential employees so why not use that second person?

Do you have a role model? Or are there other initiatives you look to as models elsewhere in the world?

I might agree to say this is an experiment but it is a very qualified experiment and it is based on the needs that are out there, but we do not have a lot of best practice or how to do this as such. I have experience from working for International Student Centre, where the target group for integration was exchange students.

Some groups like Invest in Denmark, Work in Denmark have provided best practices for things on how to attract employees as so on, but there is not a very big guidebook about creating a network of this kind.

What is going to be your biggest challenge in all of this?

That is an easy one! I have experienced that there is huge interest in this project - from the media, the business, Erhverv Århus and the Mayors office.  So the challenge in the short term is actually to prioritize all of the many needs and that is ultimately a question of defining and managing expectations.

That is 80 percent communication.

Give Tiny a call or an email to learn more about the project:

tm@internationalcommunity.dk

+45 3035 1735

Their website is here: www.internationalcommunity.dk

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To be or not to be?

That is the question these days here in Ã…rhus, where unemployment is at 2.4 percent, a skyscraper is being built on the harbor, a train connection may or not be built within the next 20 years and there simply isn’t enough manpower, womanpower or childpower to keep up.

Should Ã…rhus try to become an international city? Can it be? What in the hell does that mean anyway?

Last week hundereds of business leaders, academics and politicians were asking the question too - and they produced no fewer than 500 ideas - first at the Århuskonference on Feb 25, then a couple days later at the Internationalisering på Hjemmebane seminar at Studenterhus Århus.

Ã…rhus seems to really want to convince the world, and especially itself, that this possible. That to be an international city, it only has to decide to become one. Maybe. You could argue that they are doing it in China.

But my bid is that Ã…rhus should simply forget about it. And this issue is actually quite personal for me.

I moved to Aarhus from Manhattan in 2003. My choice to do so was a conscientious one. If living in the middle of an “international” city was important for me, I would have stayed in New York. If an international city is what someone is looking for, then most will always move to London, Paris, New York or any number of others. Even cosmopolian Copenhagen lies low on that list.

The city and kommune of Aarhus have a lot to offer that Copenhagen doesn’t. So play on your strengths. Quit trying to be Copenhagen. You are not, and you never will be. If Ã…rhus wants to be more international - the city needs to become more of what it already is.

In the US, Money magazine produces a “best places to live” issue each year. The last time they ranked cities, the list was dominated by places with between 300,000 and 600,000 residents, most of which are university towns with a strong sense of community and most of which were within a 3 hour drive of a bigger metropolitan area…

Is this sounding familiar?

This afternoon, Ã…rhus kommune allocated 3.8 million kroner to brand Ã…rhus through events like “The Viking Market” and the “lets-get-shitfaced-and-piss-in-the-street-folkefest” a.k.a. Festugen. So maybe we are already well on the way to becoming more of what we already are. Maybe the key is now making sure that the right people out in the world know we are here instead of worrying so much about trying to be - or not to be - something else.

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