Google Earth Community: The Housewife Association that owns Nokia

Ciao

This story began over fifty years ago, when the Finnish feminist Cely Mechelin used to spend the summer at Bromarv, a small village in southwestern Finland.

Mrs. Cely Mechelin and her house at Bromarv

She bequeathed her house and 300,000 finnmark for the maintenance of the building, to the Martha group, a housewife association managed by her good friend Mrs. Tora Grönlund.

Mrs. Tora, with an extraordinary, although unwitting, business sense, invested that money by buying 120,000 shares of an unknown enterprise, which manufactured rubber boots and telephone wires at that time: Nokia.

Then she and her friends keeped enjoying their afternoon coffee time, but no one seemed to remember of those shares.

Coffee table at Martha's

Time goes by.

A few years ago a finnish newspaper published an article titled "Who owns Nokia?".
In the short list of 318 owners of considerable block of shares, the Housewife Association of Bromarv surprisingly stood out between banks and international investment groups.
And the present members of Martha didn't even know that.

Well, now Martha is the richest housewife association of the world with a fortune of approximately 7 million Euro (about 9 million USD).

Don't think those gentle ladies are wasting all that money!

Although they are still enjoying their coffee, baked cakes and cook courses, they also arranged a journey to Sweden to learn about eco-friendly boilers and solar panels, since they decided to bring Bromarv, a place with no more children and with only 200 inhabitants left, back to life.

A new exemplary ecological housing estate has been built, completely from wood and untreated colors. And there is already a waiting list for the houses, young people come again to Bromarv.

Now there is new life in the village, thanks to the Martha Housewife Club.

I do love this story!

Sources:
- ZDF
- Brigitte.de

Bromarv Gallery: link.

Bye
b

EDIT:
I originally posted this story in the Open Forum since I don't know the exact location of this wonderful association of sweet ladies, plus we cannot see that much, due to low-res.
A Moderator has moved my post here, so I've spruced up a bit the placemark, by adding a couple of pics, since it will go into the layers one day.

Special thanks to who have ranked my post and to TheLedge.

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Forum Post of the Week on 13 November 2006

Edited by bebop (11/13/06 10:57 AM)