Become a service provider for the Espoo Hobby Path

Our goal is to offer every child and young person in living Espoo meaningful and free leisure activities. We support the participation, agency and safety of children and young people, as well as their attachment to the community and society.

We are looking for high-quality and diverse hobbies, the content and activities of which meet the wishes and needs of children and young people. Hobbies may include:

• media and digital hobbies
• arts, self-expression and manual skills hobbies
• themed clubs like cooking or animal clubs
• different types of outdoor and indoor exercise activities
• new, innovative hobbies.

In particular, we are looking for hobbies where:

• instructors can speak another language in addition to Finnish; for example, Swedish, Russian, Ukrainian, Somali or Arabic
• different types of learners are taken into account
• children and young people who need special support are taken into account.

Our hobby groups must also meet certain operational requirements:

• the content of the hobby groups is suitable for children and young people in grades 3–9
• the hobby groups are held at schools, other city-owned premises, service providers’ own premises in Espoo or remotely
• the hobby groups are held on weekdays in the afternoon after the school day
• the hobby groups meet regularly and last for the entire school year
• the hobby groups are always free of charge to the participants. participants do not need to buy special equipment for the hobby
• in the hobby groups, children and young people are actively consulted and set their own goals for their hobby
• the hobby groups observe the principles of a safe space
• the instructors of the hobby groups must be at least 18 years old and have at least one year of experience in instructing the hobby.

In the procurement of recreational services, we comply with the Act on Public Procurement, and we select the providers of recreational services through a two-stage procurement procedure:

1. At the first stage, you respond to a request for participation and submit a participation application to the dynamic supplier register. The request for participation is published in the Tarjouspalvelu.fi portal at a separately announced time once a year or less frequently. 
   
   At the first stage, you do not yet commit to providing the services and the city does not commit to ordering the services. All actors meeting the requirements set out in the request for participation and its attachments are included in the dynamic supplier register.
    
2. At the second stage, you can receive calls for tenders and offer your services to the Espoo Hobby Path. We only send the calls to tender to those accepted to the supplier register at the first stage. We send out calls to tender at least once a year in the spring.

We organise an information event on the Espoo Hobby Path and the procurement procedure for new interested operators before the request for praticipation is published. You can join the Espoo Hobby Path procurement mailing list by sending an email to harrastuspolku@espoo.fi.

The Espoo Hobby Path implements the Ministry of Education and Culture’s Finnish model for leisure activities in Espoo. 

The aim of the Finnish model for leisure activities is to support the well-being of children and young people by enabling every child and young person to have a leisure activity in connection with the school day that they enjoy and is free of charge. The range of activities on offer is organised according to the wishes of children and young people. The operating model is being designed, built and tested together with the providers of the activities.  

The website of the Finnish model for leisure activities(external link, opens in a new window) offers plenty of useful information to service providers (in Finnish).