OLKA Service Channels
Oiva Information Service
OLKA provides information about the services provided by non-profit organizations and hospitals. Organizations and hospital units organize theme days at OLKA Service Points to talk about what they do and what support is available.
OLKA Service Points also have brochures that can be browsed or taken home. Theme day programs are published on the local OLKA social media pages, and the programs are also sent to wards.
OLKA provides peer support for hospital patients and their near ones. Peer support helps patients adapt to their disease and improves self-care. Information about peer support is available through Terveyskylä’s Vertaistalo.fi service (available only in Finnish). The website also hosts the Etsi vertaistukea (Peer Support Finder, available only in Finnish) search engine that helps people find an organization that offers the peer support they need.
Toivo Support Service
OLKA coordinates volunteer activities in the participating hospitals. Hospital volunteers operate in the hospital’s public areas, wards, waiting rooms, or patient rooms. In addition to peer support activities carried out in hospitals, OLKA coordinates two online peer support services.
Vertaistalo is an online service that compiles information about peer support and the organizations that provide it. The website offers practical tips and contact information for different associations’ peer support services as well as personal experience stories.
Toivo Peer Support Application
The Toivo peer support application is a free online platform for peer support through which users can find a suitable peer supporter — even completely anonymously. The application can be downloaded free of charge from app stores or used in a web browser at this address.
Voluntary Ilona Service
OLKA coordinates volunteer activities in the participating hospitals. Hospital volunteers operate in the hospital’s public areas, wards, waiting rooms, or patient rooms.
Volunteers can act as peer supporters, hospice support persons, lobby assistants, lend a listening ear to others, and play with children on pediatric wards.
Volunteers are easy to spot by the green vest with the words Vapaaehtoinen-Frivillig on the back.
Would You Like to Volunteer with OLKA?
Helmi Developer Service
The Helmi developer service provides information and support to hospital professionals. People working in the developer service have first-hand experience of becoming ill or disabled or they have witnessed their loved one become ill or invalid, and they have been trained for their role.
Developer tasks include personal experience speeches, working group memberships, and experience-based consultations to increase professionals’ understanding of their patient’s situation. People working in the developer service are bound by confidentiality.
HELMI developer services have been developed in cooperation with Kokemustoimintaverkosto (Lived Experience Network, available only in Finnish), nationwide OLKA network and other participating organizations.