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Helping Ukrainian war refugees in Estonia adjust to the new environment through a co-designed mentor+buddy program concept focused on learning from failure and turning Estonia into a stepping stone of their goals. This is a project from my MA Design for Social Innovation course done in collaboration with the Estonian Refugee Council.
individual:
prototyping
with a team:
desk research, interviews, co-design workshop, concept development, testing, survey
Sep - Oct 2023 (6 weeks)
After the Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, millions were forced to relocate. Estonia welcomed around 60,000 of Ukrainian refugees, which is the most per-capita in the world.
Estonian Refugee Council (ERC) is one of the organisations helping newcomers adapt to the new life situation. They have done a lot of work with various age groups but not so much with the teenagers. So, our challenge was to help the teenage refugees integrate.
As the whole class we conducted 17 interviews with Ukrainian teens, their parents, teachers and Estonian classmates.
We discovered 4 key problem areas and my team focused on those who lack motivation to live fully in Estonia because their future is uncertain.
Many of them plan to move back to Ukraine as soon as possible, or emigrate to a different country. It reflects on their behaviour by not learning Estonian language, not building social capital or not doing their homework or studying.
By talking to experts and desk-researching the best approaches for working with refugees, we shift our focus from integration.
Meanwhile integration tries to make two different groups work together, inclusion acknowledges the differences within these groups and treats everyone as individual. It would not try to make Ukrainian befriend an Estonian just because they are different, but let it evolve freely based on their interest or personality.
Full on assimilation often results in loss of identity, declining mental health and bullying. Dual-intentity theory talks about nurturing the host and heritage identities and leads to better outcomes in terms of overall adjustment to the new environment.
Learning that the future location for many Ukrainians is unclear and integration is not the goal, we got an idea to help them make the most out of their time in Estonia by moving towards their goals. We framed the challenge as follows:
At this point in the process we felt right at the beginning. We had no idea what would help the teens achieve their goals or what are the problems on the way.
We thus organized a workshop with 6 Ukrainian high-school students and learned an important figure for many is their grandma. She provides a safe and supportive space, helping with their lack of confidence on the way to their dreams.
They also liked the idea to focus on learning from failure rather than aiming for high results, what many integration programs focus on.
Dot voting on the favourite ideas and some sketches teens made to represent their dreams.
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We have combined the learnings and ideas from the workshop and prototyped a webpage for a mentor+buddy program. Teens could choose a mentor (volunteer) experienced in the area of their interest such as fashion design, IT, pharmacology...
On their profile mentors would mention what obstacles/failures they have had on their professional journey, rather than focusing on their achievements/success as the conventional mentor programs do.
Buddy- person interested in the same area as you, mentored by the same mentor was originally thought to be a fellow Ukrainian. During testing, it was requested to have Estonian buddies as they could help with the language and settling down. This also aligned with the lack of opportunities for Estonian teens to help Ukrainians.
The reaction teens had during testing was: "Is this real? When can I sign up?". Which expressed their interest in such a program.
Have a look at the prototype of a webpage for this mentor+buddy program.
We co-designed the concept through the workshop and testing which were both qualitative methods including just 10 teens. To validate our identified problem and proposed solution we have started a quantitative survey but did not have time to get enough statistically significant responses. If the survey brought contradictory results, we would have to iterate and come up with a different solution.
This project won a faculty award for the best social innovation project.
(My teammates Heily and Esther- in the middle.)
The feedback we have received from the Estonian Refugee Council (ERC) was quite positive. They have mentioned that they tried a mentoring system before, however the option to include young Estonians as buddies was novatory and inpsiring for them. So was the focus on failing rather than pushing towards being the best. As of now, they haven't expressed their interest or further plans with this project. We suggested that they could proceed with a quantitative study.
