During the first week of November, the Foundation for Integration and Migration “Our People” (MISA) celebrated the successful conclusion of the work exchange programme.

Since 2008, it has benefited to160 Russian speaking clerical workers from the sectors of education, culture, medicine and security, whose command of Estonian was insufficient. 65 of them went through the work exchange program and the language study in 2010.

The purpose of the work exchange programme was to support adults whose mother tongue is different from the official State language by working in Estonian language environments. Over three years, 16 native Estonian speakers also participated in the programme, offering support to colleagues working in the Russian speaking environment, helping to learn the language and providing an opportunity to communicate in Estonian. Language practice in the Estonian environment lasted for 2-4 weeks. Every participant in the programme was appointed a support person from the receiving organisation, whose responsibility was to support the exchange worker in fulfilling the goals. As part of the language training, Estonian culture and history was promoted - participants visited museums, theatres, etc. In addition to language practice, there was a complementary language training of 60 hours, which was divided into pre-mission and post-mission training.

Work exchanges were carried out at the request of the Foundation for Integration and Migration “Our People” (MISA) and with the support from the European Social Fund programme “Developing language studies in 2007-2010”. In 2010, the work exchanges were carried out by Sola Integra OÜ.