– Rediscovering the city through my children

As a mother of young children, it is no wonder that the children are the new center of Borgen-Bøe’s life.

And they have made the love for the city center in Ålesund even stronger than ever.

– I am rediscovering the city through my children. It’s so wonderful to get out and use the offers that are there for children too, says Cecilie Borgen-Bøe.

– The children love being in the city

She and her husband Erik like to combine both being outside and inside when their children Serina (4 years) and Nelia (2 years) join them on city trips.

– Now I am very connected to my children. The choices are often about whether we want to go out into nature or to the city to eat and experience some culture. In Ålesund you can do both with small children. We spend a lot of time in the city park and playground, which we can combine with café visits. I am very fond of city center trips and especially with the children.

Borgen-Bøe sees how the two have a great time when they get to go on a city trip.

– It is important to me that the children can join the center. It should not be the case that the adults should be able to go there, while the children must be on playgrounds in pig-fenced areas. The children love being in the city, seeing lots of people and going to cafes. Just being part of the cityscape gives them a lot of joy. Should it become a bit much, we can just retreat to the playground in the city park, take a walk up the stairs or run around Borgund Museum. Then they get some energy out. I think it is well suited for small children, for us it works very well in any case.

– Ålesund is a city with more than enough options. I thought that my daughter should be allowed to start swimming and when I googled it, a total of five options came up. So I don’t miss anything there. The city bath was a big upgrade, because it was something that I felt the city was missing.

Moved to Tigerstaden

Let’s go back in time a bit. For the first ten years she lived at Vikebukt in Romsdal, before the family moved to Ålesund. Then the trip went to Sykkylven, one year in Eastern Norway in Bærum, before the trip went back to Ålesund, before she went over the mountains again and started social worker studies in Oslo.

– I needed new impulses and felt a strong need to get away. It did a lot of good there and then, because I wanted to go somewhere where I could disappear into the crowd and get away from the feeling that everyone knows everyone.

In Tigerstaden, the years flew by. She was supposed to stay there for three years while her studies continued, but suddenly ten years had passed.

Love has to take a lot of the blame for that.

– I met the man I am married to almost immediately after I arrived in Oslo. He is from Skien and loves Eastern Norway, so it was natural to stay there. I was also in my 20s when I lived there and it was very exciting with the big city.

However, Cecilie quickly discovered that there were things she missed from home.

– At the same time, it was a big transition to move there. Disappearing in the crowd was nice for a short period, but then I realized that the basic values ​​that I value very much were not present in Oslo. Like being able to greet and talk to your neighbor and that you know the name of the person sitting at the till at the grocery store. I never got the feeling of being part of a local community in Oslo.

– I don’t want to say that Ålesund is a small town and I feel that I have to explain that when I’m back in Oslo. There, people think I live in the village, and then I have to tell about everything Ålesund has to offer. It’s not like everyone knows everyone, although I feel like we have a local community in the city.

But there is one thing she misses from the capital.

– We could connect the city more by having better public transport services. That’s the only thing I miss from Oslo, because it works better. We could use an even larger part of the city if we weren’t so dependent on the car all the time.

– The Sunnmørings are inclusive

In order to get Erik on board with the moving load, she had to use a bit of womanizing. And the strategy was laid. Because she was going home. There was no doubt about that.

– It was a process to persuade him to move, but I have secretly integrated him for ten years. Because he was not particularly thrilled that I wanted to return to Sunnmøre after my studies were over. He had never climbed a mountain peak, so I could not entice with mountains and nature. But in my head, it was so simple that the day I was to establish a family, it was to happen in Sunnmøre. I brought him home with me every Easter, Christmas and summer holiday for ten years without exception. We went skiing, got up in the mountains in the summer and I showed him all the wonderful Sunnmøre had to offer. Slowly but surely, I managed to convert him, says Borgen-Bøe.

– And today he loves Sunnmøre. Erik has become half Sunnmøring, because he calls himself an almost Sunnmøring. He has almost become patriotic, which I find very comical. He works in a bank and enjoys it, she adds.

Her own love for the city and the surrounding area has risen many notches.

– I have become much more patriotic and am madly happy in my city. I speak it much more than I did before I moved. It’s a bit strange, because I was never like that before. I have to be honest to say that I had to move from here to see how good Ålesund actually is. I have a completely different love for the city now than I had before. My husband says that he loves the people here and when I see it through his eyes, I also see that the Sunnmørings are a much more inclusive people now than what I had seen before.

Today, the family lives in Flisnes and is enjoying itself very well.

– The fact that we moved there is the result of him not wanting to move to a village and me being tired of the big city. We live in Flisnes with two small children and have mountains, fjords and forests within walking distance of our front door. The city center is only 20 minutes away. So it covers the needs of the whole family and I think that is the very best thing about being back in Ålesund. You can say that other cities have the same, but I think that Ålesund is a unique place because of its surroundings.

– I have to say that for me Flisnes is a hidden gem. When I lived here last, it was just a place we drove past. When we returned, suddenly there was a small village with families with small children everywhere. Just go out the door and you’ll meet others your age with small children. We set our sights on Flisnes because we think it’s nice to be close to the city, since we don’t necessarily have to live in the city centre. I wanted something quieter and he wanted a city, and then Flisnes was a good choice. I have become very happy with the place.

Organizes a life fair

Borgen-Bøe took Erik with her and moved back in 2021. And now she works as a project manager in a shared position between Ålesund municipality and the Development Center in Møre og Romsdal. The work focuses on professional and service development within the health and care sector. With the services for people with developmental disabilities as its special field.

– The job offers good opportunities to do new things and I get great creative freedom as a project manager. I worked for ten years in Oslo with the same target group and have taken what I have observed and learned from the professional environment there into my job in Ålesund. The development center is a very close-knit and outgoing group. So I really enjoy my job. There is a lot of drive in those who work there and there are many skilled people out there in the services.

On 18 April, she will take part in organizing a life fair in the city council hall, because Ålesund municipality wants to help people with developmental disabilities or other developmental disorders and their families to make the transition to adulthood easier.

– As far as I know, no other place in Norway has organized such a life fair. And I’m proud that Ålesund is first out. Job and technology fairs have been organized for the target group before. But here we try to include the totality of opportunities and choices one faces in this life transition, says Borgen-Bøe.

– Something that has been incredibly gratifying in this job is the great involvement in the local community. For me, it has not been difficult to get actors involved or to create commitment around the event. It says so much about the local community and Ålesund and the services offered. That alone gives me an enormous amount of energy, because everyone thinks that we must achieve this, she adds.

A total of 35 actors within work, leisure, education and housing for people with developmental disabilities and developmental disorders have announced that they will stand at the life fair.

– I am pleasantly surprised by all the lovely yes people out there. No one gains anything from participating. It’s so much fun that we make it happen, and it’s because we do it together.

– I hope that the work will help to break down barriers and create more community participation and inclusion. It has always been close to my heart to build a local community where everyone can participate.