The Finnish national team forwards, Oona and Veera Kauppi, who represent the SSL team Thorengruppen IBK, launched a KauppiTwins website on Monday 8th of March. The overall mission of the KauppiTwins is to create equal opportunities and the website is one way to influence and tell their story. 

The IFF asked the KauppiTwins to tell a bit more about the idea behind the website.

– The idea for KauppiTwins came when we realised that there were many people who enjoyed seeing us and our everyday life a bit closer on Instagram. We thought it might be a good way to promote floorball and women’s ability to do things as well as men. The idea of Equal Opportunities came a bit later because we have experience that equality doesn’t always happen as well as it should. Our mission with KauppiTwins is to get equal opportunities – a possibility for everyone to do things that they love and fulfil their dreams in sports and in life despite e.g. their age, gender or background. We also want to raise women’s voices and experiences about professional sports and other matters.

Oona and Veera also want to stress the importance of having female role models:

– The website was just one way to make this a bit bigger and official and tell our story. We don’t want to be just athletes and floorball players but persons trying to show that everything is possible and be good role models for younger players. We want to encourage them to chase their dreams like we’ve done. When we were kids our role models were football players like Laura Kalmari because there weren’t any women professionals in floorball to look up to. We believe that it’s important to have idols because ”you can’t be what you can’t see”. 

The idea is also to launch other floorball related projects:

– We also want to offer our help in forms of summer camps, lectures, tips and so on because we thought it would be one way to help others and guide them to get to where we are today. At the same time we also want to make part of our living from this. If there wasn’t covid we would’ve already had summer camps last summer where anyone can join whether they’re for example beginners or more experienced players, young or old or persons with disabilities. We want to be active in social media and raise public awareness about matters that are important to us. We also have plans with other kinds of ways to get our voices heard but with that you’re going to need to wait a bit! :-) 

One overall aim for the KauppiTwins is to see the sport grow:

– We want floorball to grow as a sport and we see huge potential in it – there’s just quite much work to do. We want to be a part of that work and change that creates better and more equal opportunities for all. We hope that many younger players get to experience what it’s like to be a professional or semi-professional athlete. 

Visit the KauppiTwins website!