May 5, 2000

Ambassador Melissa Wells' Remarks
at the Integration Through Training Project Ceremony
in Sillamäe

Friday, May 5, 2000

It is a great pleasure for me to be here in Sillamäe today. It is a pleasure because the project that we are celebrating is one that actually changed the lives of people. And it is a pleasure because those lives were changed through wonderful cooperation among Estonian NGOs, the International Organization for Migration, and the OSCE's Tallinn office and with the financial support of the U.S. Government.

I and my staff at the American Embassy are deeply involved in supporting the integration of non-Estonians, most of whom are Russian speakers, into Estonian society. We believe that successful integration of that one-third minority of Estonia's population is good not only for non-Estonians, but is good also for ethnic Estonians and vitally important for this country's relations with Russia and for overall regional stability.

This project, officially designated the "Integration Through Training for Estonian and Non-Estonian Women" project, was primarily designed to assist non-Estonian women. It targeted some of the most vulnerable among them, the widows and divorcees of ex-Soviet army officers and other Soviet military personnel. These women, many of whom are mothers with young children, are struggling to survive. They have no spouses to assist them. Following the rapid break-up of the former Soviet Union, they found themselves living in a newly independent country. They are Russian-speaking in a land where Estonian, the official language, is the main language of communication, trade, and education. The great majority of them lack Estonian citizenship. As Estonia embraced the market economy with a vengeance, many of the enterprises in Russian-speaking regions and enclaves were reduced in size, privatized, or went bankrupt due to inefficiency. That led to large-scale unemployment. As has happened so many times before, women -- and especially single women and single mothers -- were hurt the most by economic crisis and unemployment.

The International Organization for Migration, the OSCE, and the U.S. Government recognized the severity of the problem among the widows and divorcees of former Soviet military personnel. The Integration Through Training project was fully launched in 1998. It had marvelous goals: " ... (to) contribute to the integration of non-Estonian and socially vulnerable (ethnic) Estonian women into a multi-cultural and pluralistic Estonian society.... (to) promote proficiency in the Estonian language and provide a broader understanding of women's role in Estonia's rapidly changing cultural climate.... (and, to) make vocational training available to specific groups of vulnerable women."

From all indications, those marvelous goals were translated into marvelous results. For example, 150 women -- ranging in age from 20 through 55 years old -- were offered Estonian language lessons by the project. The great majority of them had never before had Estonian language training. Of those 150 participants, 139 achieved successful results in their official state language examinations. And, ten of the women with the highest results participated in an innovative language-learning project, one in which they had the opportunity of obtaining intensive training at a summer school-type training camp. Most extraordinary was the fact that the women came from Narva, which is 95% Russian-speaking, and spent their two-week training experience living with Estonian families on Hiiumaa, which is 95% Estonian-speaking.

All of us in the American Embassy know what an achievement that is. We have struggled to learn something of this ancient, non-Indo-European language overflowing with cases and strange and mysterious words. We congratulate those non–Estonian women who have succeeded in obtaining the most important key for entry into Estonian life and culture, the key of Estonian language knowledge. That key will certainly provide them with greatly increased employment possibilities. It will also allow them to take part in the full breadth of Estonian cultural life.

While an ability to function in Estonian is the key to full integration into Estonian society, decent jobs are the key to a better standard of living. The women targeted by this project often had few skills of use in today's job market. Particularly vulnerable women, such as unemployed single mothers, had neither the means nor knowledge to affect improvement in their lives. Successful change is most often based on step by step forward movement. What women in Narva, Kohtla-Järve, Sillamäe, and other towns need are basic computer skills, the fundamentals of bookkeeping and accounting, and training for jobs that never go out of style -- as seamstresses, hairdressers, and cosmetologists.. The Integration Through Training project coordinators also realized that there was a need to assist a number of these women to become independent entrpreneurs in the new, free-market Estonian economy.

Those who participated in vocational training programs, acquiring computer and basic accounting skills and expertise as seamstresses or hairdressers, often did succeed in getting better positions at their current places of employment or at new jobs. The need for this type of training is great in areas of high unemployment in the Northeast and Northwest -- Paldiski, for instance. The available funding, unfortunately, was not great enough to meet the demand. While we are very happy that we were able to assist 170 women, we know that over 300 applied. To some, those are only numbers. To me, it means that 130 women, 130 individuals who had what we call the get-up-and-go to want to initiate positive change in their and their families' lives, were prevented from doing so because their simply wasn't enough money.

The project's assistance to would-be women entrepreneurs was designed to create self-employment opportunities for some of the participants. Assistance came in the form of small-scale business grants to women who, in collaboration with a small business specialist from the Tallinn Employment Office, had taken the time to prepare business plans and obtain legal registration of their businesses. A panel of representatives from the Tallinn and Northeast Employment Offices, as well as from the the very active Estonian Business Women's Association, selected 15 proposals to receive small grants.

I am very happy to see that the project's business grants program was successful. I am especially happy because, at this very moment, the American Embassy, in cooperation with Estonian Government officials, Estonian NGOs, and the Nordic Council of Ministers' offices in Tallinn and Copenhagen, is working on a "mentoring" program for Estonian women entrepreneurs. We plan on putting individual women entrepreneurs -- both non-Estonian and Estonian -- in contact with Nordic and American businesswomen who will provide business guidance via e-mail to the Estonian entrepreneurs. Our two basic selection guidelines for choosing the Estonian participants are: one, they must have a business that is not losing money and, two, that they have a fundamental working knowledge of English.

The Integration Through Training project's selection panel also had basic selection criteria: there must be a realistic chance for the success of the proposed business in the local market, the business must contribute to local job creation, there should be realistic budget planning, and there must be a logically-chosen client base. The project had realistic goals. It did not expect new Microsofts or HansaPanks to develop out of this business support program. But, when I see that the program created a sewing company in Narva that employs 5 disabled women and a handicrafts/souvenir shop in Sillamäe that employs 3 persons and 4 craftspersons, I know that progress has been made. I also know that a recent OECD report highlighted Estonian support for small- and medium-sized enterprises as one of the reasons for Estonia's economic success.

Cross-cultural understanding was, I'm glad to report, not left out of the overall project. A one-day workshop on the main aspectsof the integration process in Estonia was held in Pärnu, drawing participants from Kohtla-Järve and Sillamäe. When 80 non-Estonian women from Ämari, Klooga, and Paldiski attended a workshop in Tartu on Estonian history, culture, and traditions, it was found that a majority of them had never before visited Tartu.

I'm also glad to report that children, your country's future, were certainly not forgotten by the project. Over 100 Russian-speaking children, ranging in age from 10-17 years old, had the opportunity of attending Estonian language training summer camps. Contact with an Estonian host family and local Estonian-speaking children in the countryside brought these youngsters much closer to Estonian cultural traditions. It also provided them with a fresh, fun way of learning Estonian.

Americans know that these kinds of experiences work in bringing people from diverse ethnic backgrounds closer together. In New York City, the Fresh Air Fund is an organization that is over a hundred years old. In the beginning of the 20th century, that organization sent poor immigrant children -- mostly from southern and eastern Europe -- to summer vacations with host families in rural areas. Although the immigrant children and the host families were from very different cultural and economic backgrounds, when they lived and played together for just a few weeks, they learned to understand, respect, and like each other. Today, we are still integrating new immigrants into American society. It is never easy, but it is necessary and can be accomplished.

Late last week, President Meri said, "What is the task we've fit into the word ‘integration' ?" His reply to his own question: "Nothing more than that each person living in Estonia should feel love and responsibility for Estonia. And, I wish that this common feeling -- that we're building with our own hands a single homeland, that all of us, while having a deeply individual relation with it, are working toward one and the same goal -- would find expression in our everyday life ...."

Projects such as "Integration Through Training are of great significance in helping to make President Meri's hope a reality. All aspects of the project -- language teaching, vocational and business training, and cultural workshops -- have worked together to provide a better life for its Russian-speaking, non-Estonian women participants. The graduates of this project will come away with the necessary self-confidence to function as active members of Estonian society. And, the ability to function in this society with fewer linguistic and economic fears will surely make them more positive toward integration. I certainly believe that the women participants assisted by this project, whether from Johvi, Klooga, Kohtla-Järve, Narva, Paldiski, Sillamäe, or Ämari, will one day see themselves as participants in a bigger enterprise: that of building with their own hands a single Estonian homeland.

Thank you all for being here. Thank you all for helping to make this project a success.