Inkerin kulttuuriseura
Käpylänkuja 1
00610, Helsinki

Email: helena.miettinen@inkeri.com
website: www.inkeri.com

Project resume of partnership: http://www.inkeri.com/memoryboxes.pdf

Responsible person: Helena Miettinen

The Ingrian Cultural Association (ICA) was established 1993. Main targets of the ICA are to enliven and to maintain Ingrian Finnish culture and promote Russian Finnish remigrants to integrate in Finland. Ingrians is a small and unknown nation, who lived in Russia. Ingrians are Finns, who emigrated to Russia, 400 years ago to the present area of Leningrad.  During the Stalin era Ingrian Finns were repressed and deported from their native homeland to different parts of the SU. Some thousands came as refugees to Finland in the Soviet time, but now Ingrian Finns have a legal possibility to move to Finland as remigrants. Most of the members of the ICA are Ingrians of the origin and they or their parents have immigrated in Finland. The association has a very deep knowledge in the Ingrian history and culture. The double identity of the members of ICA means a huge intellectual resource in tailoring integration programmes for the group. Most of the elder Ingrian remigrants in Finland are women, because men were killed in the war or prison camps.
Ingrians and their history is quite unknown in Finland. After the Second World War official Finland kept silent of the situation of Ingrians. That is why their history, customs, folklore and culture are not well known in Finland even now. Because of long ties between Ingrian Finns and Finland there are many cultural places and monuments.
ICA is an expert in artistic reminiscence field. Working among people, who have lost their homeland, mother tongue, religion and family members and all they have left are memories, has forced to create special working methods to support and to empower the identities of the target group. ICA has organized more than 20 workshops in Finland, Russia, Estonia, Sweden, Norway and Scotland and has had training projects to Social workers and students.  We have published a guide book of empowering reminiscence work in Finnish and Russian languages.