Unitas Foundation

Updated on Dec 01, 2023

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Location Tallinn, Estonia		Founded 2008
Focus Education, Research, Public Awareness Slogan Building reconciliation within and between societies divided by totalitarianism. Website www.unitasfoundation.org Founders Mart Laar, Meelis Niinepuu, Damian von Stauffenberg

The Unitas Foundation is an Estonian-based apolitical and supranational foundation that focuses its activities on engaging youth, supporting research and raising public awareness in the field of history, the politics of memory and related social issues. The foundation was established in 2008, its headquarters is located in Tallinn. The current CEO of the foundation is Sandra Vokk. It is a founding member of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, an educational project of the European Union bringing together government institutions and organisations mainly from the EU, active in research, documentation, awareness raising and education concerning the crimes of totalitarian regimes.

Founders and mission

The Unitas Foundation was established in 2008 by Mart Laar, Meelis Niinepuu and Damian von Stauffenberg. Its mission is to build reconciliation within and between societies divided by totalitarianism. The foundation condemns totalitarianism regardless of time and place and engages primarily in research, education and awareness raising activities. It values the protection and universality of human rights, and the rule of law.

The Unitas Foundation is dedicated to improving knowledge and understanding of the scope of severe human rights violations committed by totalitarian regimes over the last century. To address the issues of totalitarianism and its social significance, and raise awareness of its full extent, the foundation encourages research into communist regimes, and leads and supports activities that support this mission.

The foundation works with researchers and experts in history, political science, education, international law and other related fields. It values education, openness and innovation in fulfilling its mission.

Programmes

The foundation fulfils its mission by engaging with youth, experts & researchers, and the general public. These groups also define its three programmes:

Engaging Youth - The foundation believes a good citizen understands how the past shapes the present and assumes an active role in improving her environment. The goal of this programme is to provide youth the necessary experience, know-how and attitudes to do so.

Involving Experts and Researchers - This programme actively engages with teachers, researchers and other experts in human rights and history education. The foundation develops and produces educational materials and resources, organises teacher trainings, facilitates research and works with relevant policy makers to ensure a balanced coverage of regional history in the education systems.

Raising Awareness - The Foundation encourages public discourse in the politics of memory in order to maintain an open and balanced discussion of contemporary history. This is done through organising remembrance events and articles, holding conferences, public lectures and seminars, and running various social and civic campaigns.

Projects

The Unitas Foundation has been working on various projects to promote history education and awareness of the past crimes. Its primary projects are as follows:

Kogu Me Lugu: translated into English; Collect Our Story or We’re Collecting the Story is an initiative to collect, preserve and share the family stories of Estonians. It was designed by the Foundation on the June deportations Commemoration Day on 14 July 2013. It collects the memories of people who were repressed by the Soviet or Nazi regimes, people who escaped Estonia during the occupations of said regimes or arrived in Estonia as a result of the occupations. The uniqueness of the idea is its focus on audio-visual storytelling of Estonian oral history; the stories are stored as video interviews, produced as short films, and used for educational purposes.

SinuFilm is a youth campaign and educational programme to study and talk about past and present crimes against humanity in a contemporary and inclusive manner – through filmmaking. Clips made in the programme take part in a video story competition where the best authors and teams are awarded various prizes and scholarships. The last competition took place in 2014.

Model International Criminal Court is a sophisticated mechanism for the protection of Human Rights and rules of warfare. The MICC method originates from the Kreisau Initiative e.V. (Germany) to teach the core principles of the ICC to high school and university students.

“Different Nations – Shared Experiences” is one of the sub-projects implemented under the Bridging the Baltic programme that is a partnership based co-operation between the Foundation and Museum of Occupation of Latvia. It aims to project the history awareness of Baltic Sea Region, teachers’ approaches to regional history and the content of national secondary school syllabi. The research within the framework of this programme was conducted actively between the years 2011 and 2014.