Turku will publish informative videos in seven languages to encourage the residents of Turku to get vaccinated against coronavirus.

The need for providing additional multilingual information arose from not only from the various operators in the city, but also from the migrant communities themselves who became concerned when various vaccine-related fears and rumours spread among them and on their own social media channels. The videos relate to issues such as the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine and the claim that the vaccine would cause infertility. 

Russian, Turkish, Kurdish, Persian, Arabic, Somali and English were chosen as the languages for the videos. With these languages, we aim to reach as many residents as possible who do not read the city’s COVID-19 information material in Finnish, Swedish or English.

“We wanted to serve our multilingual residents better, ease their fears and help those working with immigrants to spread information. Videos are a good way to get information across to a wide audience,” says Saara Malila, the Communications Manager of the City of Turku.

We asked residents with an immigrant background to perform on the videos. Conversations on the videos are scripted in advance. The context of the conversation is fictional, but it contains real rumours circulating in different communities about the suspicions raised by the coronavirus vaccine. The content and scientific facts have been checked by the City of Turku’s Chief Physician for Infectious Diseases Jutta Peltoniemi.

Several operators from the City of Turku and migrant communities have been involved in the production of the videos. The communities will also help to share information. Turku’s Infotori will distribute videos to multilingual information points around Finland. The videos are produced in seven languages and will be freely available to other cities as well.

The videos will be published on the City of Turku YouTube channel and other social media channels.

The videos are available on the City of Turku YouTube channel: