Personal experience
During my BBA and MBA studies I was always interested in various kinds of research and migration process. Emigration in Lithuania (where I originally am from) was in quite high level – it was interesting and valuable experience to see and feel this process and its influence from inside. In that time I decided to explore migration process more and went to Denmark to immigrant children summer centre. As I worked as a day time teacher there I gained very valuable knowledge about different cultures, and also about influence on the countries that receive a lot of immigrants and those that are emigrated from.
Later on I moved to live to Iceland and had very interesting experience there. As I came to Iceland, Lithuanians were the second biggest national minority group there (about 1300 Lithuanians). Unfortunately, part of this group was representing there country and nationality through activities and actions that were shameful. I personally have experienced what it means to be judged according of actions of small group of people. But I was confident that there are many Lithuanians in Iceland that are like those whom I remember in Lithuania: my family, friends, neighbours, teachers, etc. This is why I have decided to encourage Lithuanians in Iceland to establish Lithuanian – Icelandic community. This community is one of most active communities in Iceland: is presenting Lithuanian culture, traditions, at the same time learning local traditions and getting to know local socio – cultural environment. Community was created to implement three main goals: 1) unite for implementation of common activities, 2) cultural exchange,3) development of community (www.ltis.org).
From example of Lithuanian – Icelandic community it was obvious that educating and informing people about different aspects of socio – cultural environment of other country can bring very positive results. This was the reason to initiate a project that would focus in increase and wider scope of this field.
Experience of Persona Optima Iceland ehf.
Persona Optima Iceland is private young company (JSC). Since the establishment company set high performance standards on itself and is since then is working to reach its goals, main of them is to be trustworthy and value adding partner to our clients, colleagues, partners.
Persona Optima Iceland’s spectrum of services is wide:
● Human resource management service,
● Other business related,
● Project management,
● Security and safety,
● Consultancy for individuals,
● Participation in International and European projects.
At this moment Persona Optima Iceland is mainly supplying service of Human resource management and Project management.
Persona Optima Iceland ehf. is implementing its daily activities in the country where live representatives of more than 123 nationalities (total population in Iceland is 300 000). Our daily routine and various projects allow us to experience importance of tolerance towards other nationalities, about importance of knowing cultural and social environment of different countries – especially neighbouring countries.
Even though Persona Optima Iceland ehf. is a private company, we still seek to make our input into society and its development or problem solving processes. We have direct contact with the foreigners in Iceland or with a companies who are hiring foreigners (majority of them are from Baltic countries) and we are convinced that foreigners that are coming to Iceland should try to know more about local culture and country before they come here, on the other hand we think, that Icelanders who have broader knowledge about Baltic countries are able to find dialogue with immigrants faster, more effectively and outcome of such communication is usually very good.
funds.
