Problem addressed

The project addresses fragmented integration support for Ukrainian refugee youth in Estonia and Poland. Language is often the most visible barrier, but the deeper challenge is that language learning, educational progress, psychosocial wellbeing, peer belonging, identity development and future planning are closely connected in young people’s lives, while support systems often treat them separately.

Many Ukrainian refugee adolescents and young adults face limited host-language skills, interrupted learning pathways, social isolation, uncertainty about their future, and reduced confidence and agency after displacement. Limited language skills restrict their opportunities in education and employment, reduce access to services, and hinder communication and participation in local communities. At the same time, displacement interrupts a critical developmental stage where identity, belonging, independence, social relationships and educational choices are being formed. 

The project responds to this by testing integrated youth-centered approaches that combine language learning, tutoring, psychosocial support, community activities, social cohesion and empowerment for future education and career choices. Instead of treating young people only as language learners or beneficiaries of support, the project creates emotionally safe, meaningful and participatory spaces where they can build confidence, connect with peers, strengthen learning outcomes and regain a stronger sense of agency over their future.

Innovative solution

The innovation lies in moving beyond traditional language classes and fragmented support services. Instead, the project creates emotionally safe, interest-based and participatory spaces where young people learn through meaningful interaction, peer connection, creativity and real-life use of language.

The model is built through a service design approach: young people’s needs, barriers and motivations are explored directly with youth, parents, teachers and practitioners, then translated into prototypes, tested in real-life settings, evaluated and iteratively improved. This allows the intervention to remain adaptive rather than fixed, and to respond to how young people actually experience integration — socially, emotionally, educationally and linguistically. The model is adaptive to different national contexts: in Estonia it is primarily community-based, using smaller relational networks and flexible activities to build belonging and confidence; in Poland it is more school-anchored, connecting educational reinforcement with psychosocial and identity-building support inside young people’s everyday learning environment. This allows the project to test not only whether the model works, but under which conditions it works best.

The innovation is therefore not a single method or tool, but the combination of service design, language as a pathway to participation, psychosocial safety as a precondition for learning, youth agency and co-creation, community- and school-based implementation pathways, and continuous learning and adaptation across two very different integration ecosystems.

Key results and benefits

LANGUAGE Ladder has produced validated learning, a refined intervention model and early evidence on what engages Ukrainian refugee youth in Estonia and Poland. The project has shown that language learning alone is not enough: young people engage more meaningfully when language practice is embedded in emotionally safe, social, creative and interest-based activities.

The early results indicate that formal, school-like language classes can lead to disengagement, while meaningful interaction, peer bonding, community activities and psychologically safe facilitation support motivation, trust and participation. Based on this learning, the project has developed an integrated intervention model that connects language learning, tutoring, psychosocial safety, peer belonging, identity-building and future orientation.

The model is being adapted to two different contexts: in Estonia, mainly through community-based activities and smaller relational networks; in Poland, through a more school-anchored approach, as schools are the primary environment where young people’s social and educational lives unfold.

The key benefit for young people is a more supportive integration pathway that helps them practise language, build confidence, strengthen peer connections, feel safer to express themselves, receive learning support, and explore future education and career choices. For schools, NGOs and community actors, the project offers a practical service design logic for creating youth-centred integration support that connects learning, wellbeing and belonging instead of treating them as separate issues.

Potential for mainstreaming

LANGUAGE Ladder is most realistically mainstreamable as a methodology and operating logic, not as a plug-and-play programme. Its transferable value lies in helping schools, municipalities, NGOs and community actors connect language learning, educational support, psychosocial safety, peer belonging and future orientation into one youth-centred intervention.

The model can be replicated with adaptation: school-based where schools are the main integration environment, and community-based where NGOs or local networks are better placed to build trust and reach young people. The most transferable elements are service design, youth co-creation, interest-based learning, tutoring, MHPSS-informed facilitation, community activities and future-orientation workshops. Mainstreaming will require trained facilitators, regular contact over time, safeguarding, clear guidance, evidence of outcomes and committed local partners. It should not be reduced to a short language course or a one-off toolkit.