Backyard Picnics in response to desire to connect with neighbours - several hundred residents take part in SATO events today
8 June 2019
Several hundred residents of SATO, one of Finland’s leading rental housing providers, took part in SATO Backyard Picnics organised for the first time today in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Turku and Tampere. Organised on the grounds of 14 SATO buildings, the events responded to the need expressed in surveys conducted in Finland that the majority of the respondents would like to spend more time with their neighbours.
Neighbourhood festivals and events such as the Restaurant Day have increased urban communality, but in many apartment buildings people still do not know the people next door. According to the results of a survey commissioned last summer by SATO among more than a thousand people in Finland, the most natural way of spending time with neighbours among residents of apartment buildings and terraced homes is taking part in traditional communal work gatherings (55%), but more than one in three (35%) would also like to join other events such as barbecues.
- Our residents have also expressed the wish to spend more time with their neighbours, says SATO Community Manager Piia Matilainen. - Food connects people across language and cultural borders and that’s why we decided to organise Backyard Picnics where everyone brings something to share. We also wanted each event to look like the people living in the building, so residents have taken part in event planning.
- I brought coffee and strawberry cake, and the cake is already gone! It is so lovely that SATO organized this kind of event, says resident Elli Elomaa, who visited the neighbourhood festival.
Organised for the first time now, several hundred SATO residents participated in the Backyard Picnics. Matilainen hopes these events will become a tradition and that they will encourage residents to come up with other communal activities, too.
- We’ve put a lot of thought and effort into promoting good neighbourly relations in recent years. We find it plays a huge role regarding residential comfort and wellbeing, Matilainen points out. - At SATO we can contribute towards good neighbourly relations by, for example, providing the setup for these events.
SATO Backyard Picnics were organised on the grounds of a total of 14 buildings in areas including Pikku Huopalahti and Tapulikaupunki, Helsinki, Soukka, Espoo, Hakunila, Vantaa, Martti, Turku, and Härmälä, Tampere.
For more information please contact:
SATO Corporation
Miia Eloranta, Director, Marketing and Communications, miia.eloranta@sato.fi, phone +358 201 34 4497 or +358 50 441 4221
Piia Matilainen, Community Manager, piia.matilainen@sato.fi, phone: +358 201 34 4152