1. Case-study No. & Title:
No. 194. European Institute for Dispersed Ethnic Minorities: Promoting Tolerance in Eastern Europe (Lithuania, since 1998).

2. Keywords

2. Author’s information:
2.1 Author’s Name
Svetlana Ryzhakova

2.2 Institutional Affiliation and Contact Details:
Institute of ethnology and anthropology Russian Academy of Sciences
Leninsky prospekt 32-a
Moscow 117334
Russia

Tel/fax: (095) 938-5941
E-mail: lana@mega.ru

2.3 Date recorded
10/12/2000

3. Good Practice Information Sheet
3.1 Local Level Good Practice:
The European Institute for dispersed Ethnic Minorities (EIDEM) aims at establishing the conditions for the development of the ethnic culture of small indigenous ethnic groups in Lithuania and in the Eastern Europe (mostly in the former Soviet Republics). EIDEM was created by the initiative of the Vilnius Jewish Community as well as by researchers specialised in the study of the ethnic and cultural features of local small groups in Lithuania.

3.2 Location:
Vilnius (Lithuania), Kaliningrad oblast of Russia.

3.3 Minority/Target Groups:
Jews and dispersed small West-Baltic ethnic groups.

3.4 Major Actors Involved

3.5 Budget allocated by local government authorities and/or by other actors
Means for EIDEM activities are allocated from the Lithuanian State budget, and from Vilnius local budget. Other funders are also Council of Europe, Vilnius Jewish Community, «HERMIS» bank.

3.6 Time frame
The initiative was first proposed in 1996. It was officially launched on 27 July 1998 and is a permanent initiative.

3.7 Local level good practice relation to national level ethnic policy
This good practice is a result of the implementation of a Council of Europe initiative (20/03/1996) that was adopted by Lithuanian Government on 20 April 1997

4 . Good Practice Description
The European Institute for Dispersed Ethnic Minorities (hereinafter EIDEM) is an international non-profit non-governmental public organisation established on the territory of Lithuania on 27 July 1998 and acting under the auspices of the Council of Europe.
Its main goal is help small indigenous cultures of Europe which are endangered with extinction find the means for survival. EIDEM contacts communities of dispersed ethnic groups, helps select cultural projects and supports the implementation of such projects. Thus EIDEM seeks to protect dispersed peoples from cultural assimilation, and advocates diversity through education of peoples coexisting in politically converging but culturally diverse Europe. The Council of Europe backs up activities of the Institute by means of the Confidence Building Measures Program.

EIDEM organises international conferences on problems of dispersed ethnic minorities and pays especially strong attention to dispersed ethnic groups in the Post-Communist space, e.g. to such victims of the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes as Central and East European Yiddish speaking Ashkenazy Jews, as the last representatives of indigenous Baltic cultures of the former Kingdom of Prussia, or as the last representatives of indigenous Finno-Ugrian cultures in the North-western part of Russia.