In May of this year, an agreement was signed, within the framework of which Switzerland will support increasing social inclusion in Estonia in the coming years with a total of 19.2 million euros. The support will create more opportunities for people living in Estonia, especially people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, to participate in society. The focus will be on integration, education and social welfare, improving the accessibility and quality of these services and promoting social innovation. Let's take a closer look at why and what the programme is doing.
Estonia is home to many people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds and, considering future trends, is becoming even more diverse. According to Statistics Estonia, there are 217 people of different nationalities living in Estonia and 260 different mother tongues are spoken here. The most common nationalities in Estonia are Estonians, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Finns, Latvians, Germans, Lithuanians. Estonia is a destination country for migration, and creating a common Estonian identity is more important than ever.
Although great progress has been made in promoting a more cohesive Estonia, there are still a number of challenges that the country faces. People from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, new immigrants and returnees to Estonia may remain isolated due to lack of knowledge of the Estonian language or living environment. Media environments for people from different language backgrounds shape different attitudes and values. In the transition to Estonian-language learning, parents, youth and educators need support, and support specialists and the social sector must also be able to adapt to the challenges related to war refugees. Civil society, where people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds meet, increasingly needs the capacity for social innovation to tackle complex and multifaceted social challenges in today's crisis-ridden world.
The list is not exhaustive, but the diversity of challenges shows that the promotion of a cohesive Estonia must take place across sectors. It is precisely the demolition of silo towers and the increase in social inclusion in cooperation between different sectors, with the support of Switzerland, that will be undertaken in the coming years. The activities of the programme will be carried out by the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Ministry of Education and Research and the Ministry of the Interior under the direction of the Ministry of Culture. The National Coordinating Unit of the cooperation programme is the State Support Services Centre and an important partner is the University of Applied Sciences of Bern, which provides Swiss expertise in the field of social inclusion throughout the programme.
Cultural and linguistic integration
Within the framework of the activities of the Swiss-Estonia cooperation programme, the aim of the Integration Foundation is an integrated and cohesive society, where people living in Estonia, including people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, have the desire and opportunities to actively participate in social life, and the services offered to them are modern and accessible.
The process of digital transformation in the field of integration is supported - innovative digital solutions (e.g. mobile applications and online learning platforms) are being created to make integration services more accessible and to support learning about the Estonian language and cultural space. More volunteers are involved than before in order to encourage contacts in communities and increase the voluntary contribution to integration activities. A model for the involvement of volunteers will be created, which will help to make the contribution of volunteers an important and sustainable part of the integration system. Activities introducing the Estonian cultural space are also developed and offered with the involvement of cultural institutions, so that people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds would like to participate in the social life of Estonia.
The Ministry of Culture, in cooperation with the National Library, organises a media literacy programme from the point of view of media literacy for a vulnerable target group – residents of Estonia aged 50+ with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The vast majority of media literacy training programmes and projects that have taken place in Estonia so far have been aimed at children and young people, and relatively little attention has been paid to adults, especially people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. It is this target group that is characterised by poorer digital skills and long-established media and information consumption habits (the habit of consuming, for example, Russian-language journalistic content, including journalistic content produced in the Russian Federation). It is important to involve them in the common information space of Estonia and to protect them from malicious and hostile propaganda, as well as from fraudsters operating in the information space.
Social system and child protection
The aim of the Ministry of Social Affairs in the programme is to ensure that employees in the field of social and child protection have skills in line with modern needs, which help to provide high-quality services. To this end, the formal education and qualification requirements for specialists need to be modernised and the training and support system for professionals already working in the field of social and child protection needs to be developed. In order to ensure the sustainability and efficiency of social services, it is important to bring more innovation and a systemic approach to the field.
The plan is to update the professional standards in the field on which formal and continuing education is based and to create competence models that promote the linking of learning with the needs of the labour market. It also creates new opportunities for employees to enter the field and develop along their career path. In order to ensure high-quality services, the well-being of employees is important, which is enhanced by the development of the skills of specialists as well as the support systems being created. The Ministry of Social Affairs is also engaged in supporting the entry of immigrants into the labour market in the social sphere and image-building activities in order to popularise social specialities in the labour force shortage.
Education
The Ministry of Education and Research is paying increasing attention to increasing the competence of working in a multilingual and multicultural environment in the education system.
Although culturally sensitive learning is still in its infancy in Estonia, the increasingly diverse society highlights this need. With Swiss support, best practices on how to conduct studies in an even more effective multicultural and multilingual environment can be brought to universities and other educational institutions through continuing education. This goes hand in hand with the introduction of a modern approach to learning.
At the same time, parents with a cultural identity different from the Estonian national identity are helped to contribute even more diversely to the development of their children. To this end, various (online) seminars and workshops are organised to raise parents' awareness, where practical knowledge and solutions are shared. All in order to ensure that the development of every child in Estonia is supported to the maximum.
Civil society and social innovation
The activities planned by the Ministry of the Interior are aimed at increasing the competence of civil society in increasing social cohesion and raising public awareness and disseminating information about social innovation. Social innovation represents new ideas and practices that offer better solutions to social problems and challenges than in the past in order to make society and community function more efficiently.
Under the leadership of the Foundation for Civil Society, the plan is to develop and implement social hackathons and incubation programs, advise providers of products and services with a social impact, collect and disseminate best knowledge and practices, and raise awareness of social innovation in general.
Where do we want to get to?
In conclusion, the aim of the programme is to create conditions that allow people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds to actively participate in Estonian society. Professionals in the field of education and social affairs acquire new knowledge and skills through further training in order to provide more diverse and inclusive services on the basis of updated and new curricula adapted to work with people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Communities, organisations and individuals can use new knowledge of social innovation to support integration and inclusion.
In total, the programme will support increasing social inclusion in Estonia with almost 23 million euros until 2028. Swiss support makes it possible to offer more equal opportunities to the residents of Estonia from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds – to make language learning and counselling services more accessible, and to introduce the Estonian language and culture more widely. All this in cross-sectoral cooperation.
The article was prepared in cooperation between the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Ministry of Education and Research, the Ministry of the Interior and the Foundation for Civil Society.
https://www.kul.ee/uudised/sveitsi-eesti-koostooprogramm-koos-sidusama-uhiskonna-poole