Plan International Announced Winner of Inaugural Girl Award in Finland
Plan International proudly announced the winner of the first-ever Girl Award in Finland last Thursday/yesterday, marking the International Day of the Girl with a celebration of those who are advancing girls' and young women’s rights and gender equality.
The 2024 Girl Award was awarded to “Mimmit koodaa” - the program that aims to significantly increase the number of women in the software and technology sectors in Finland, where women have traditionally been underrepresented. It seeks to empower women by providing them with the skills and confidence to pursue careers in tech.
The award, supported by Huhtamaki, reinforces the shared mission to promote gender equality and ensure that also all kinds of girls have the opportunity to thrive in society.
Commitment to Gender Equality and Human Rights
"We are very proud to support the Girl Award and recognize “Mimmit koodaa” for their impact on a world where future generations have equal rights to pursue education and achieve success, regardless of their gender or background," said Salla Ahonen, Huhtamaki’s EVP of Sustainability and Communications. "This award aligns with our values, and we strongly believe that empowering girls and young women is essential to creating a prosperous society. We wanted to support this award to highlight our mission to promote diversity, inclusion, and human rights in all aspects of our business.”
Promoting diversity is an integral part of the daily operations in a global company. In recent years, we at Huhtamaki have worked to advance this important topic. In 2022, we continued implementing plans to further diversify our workforce and promote an inclusive culture. We renewed our talent acquisition guidelines to ensure that our recruitment processes and practices are fair and equitable, which includes posting all job openings both internally and externally. As a result, our recruitment efforts brought in a higher proportion of women than those who left during the same period. In 2023, we published our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Principles, which guide our employees in cultivating an environment of inclusion and belonging. Moving forward, the work will continue.
”At Huhtamaki, we are dedicated to providing a safe, engaging and high-performance culture while attracting and retaining a workforce that reflects the diversity of the markets we serve and operate in. We believe diverse teams drive innovation. We invest in fostering an environment where everyone is safe both psychologically and physically and where diversity and inclusion are embedded in our daily practices, reinforced by our policies and practices,” Ahonen adds.
A Spotlight on Equality
Plan International’s Secretary General, Ossi Heinänen, emphasized that the Girl Award helps bring critical equality issues to the forefront. Equality has not yet been achieved in any country in the world, and girls, in all their diversity, continue to face human rights violations. With Plan's Girl Award, we aim to accelerate Finland's progress towards gender equality while highlighting that the challenges girls face are global—they just manifest differently in various societies”
The award ceremony, chaired by Member of Parliament Fatim Diarra, featured a jury of diverse experts, including activists, academics, and business leaders, who evaluated the finalists’ contributions to human rights and equality.
More about Plan International and Girl Award (in finnish).
For more information on Huhtamaki's human rights commitments, please see the Global Human Rights Policy. Huhtamaki’s commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion are further outlined in Huhtamaki’s Group Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Guiding Principles.
Huhtamaki also donated a storytelling session for children through Plan International to each attendee of the gala. Many refugee families have been forced to leave most of their belongings behind. When families arrive at refugee camps, few children have toys or books with them.
Books are also expensive, and refugee families often cannot afford them. With your donation, we distribute children's books to refugee children, so that as many children as possible can have the opportunity to read. Read more about storytelling sessions (in Finnish): Satuhetki lapselle - Plan
Picture: Aaro Keipi