Executive producer of ESC 2007, Heikki Seppälä has told Eurovisionradio on YLE’s Radio Suomi about the project to recruit volunteers to work during the Eurovision event next May in Helsinki. A web form has been available for all interested Finnish members of the public to fill in on YLE’s Eurovision web site since last summer. ”About a thousand people had already signed up, when I last looked”, Mr. Seppälä told Euroviisuradio last Monday.
He says one main reason to use volunteers is the sheer vast scale of the event, and the broadcasters own staff would never be enough. Also he says it is wise to let all the capable and enthusiastic who have contacted YLE a chance to do their bit for the project. The reporter Tarja Närhi wanted to know, if this was standard practise in Eurovision events or just another way for YLE to save money. ”I am not sure of all contests”, Mr Seppälä replied, ”but I have just finished reading the closing report from Athens where volunteers made up a very important part of the whole organisation so it seems to have been the norm in the last few years.”
As of the jobs where volunteers can be used he mentions helping out the delegations from 40 countries, meeting them on arrival and so on. ”The accreditation centre need helpers, we need people to help with transports. Also we need loads of people for access control, as the arena will be divided in separate zones for different categories”. He also says help might be needed in the press centre for the expected 1500 members of the media. All in all, he says there are maybe about 10 separate job titles to be filled by volunteers.
Mr. Seppälä says it is the eleventh hour now to put your name down, as the work is going forward very rapidly and all the base work about volunteer work has already been done. What remains now is to start matching the right skills with the right jobs. As for what kind of skills are expected, he mentions language skills as first priority. Some other tasks need other skills, like stewarding and security. Also important is to find people, who can work for the duration of the project rather than just pop in for a few hours or days.
All shows so far are available for streaming, in Finnish.