Latvians and Estonians join Lithuania’s Mission Siberia

“As the Mission Siberia project is celebrating its 10-year anniversary this year, we wanted to symbolize it properly. Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania are each celebrating 25-year anniversary of independence. These are the important and crucial dates we wanted to celebrate and symbolize in a civil education project, therefore, decided to take the long-planned step to the international level,” project manager Ignas Rusilas told BNS.

In his words, the participants of the expedition were selected in cooperation with Latvian and Estonian youth organizations and will attend a pilot trip in a forest in southern Lithuania on Saturday. All in all, the trip will include 71 young people and will result in selection of 16 participants who will leave the Vilnius railway station for the Tomsk region on July 17 this year.

“I think the Mission Siberia project will manage to grow to the extent where we will have separate expeditions in all three countries as early as next year,” Rusilas said.

Mission Siberia has been held since 2006 to pay tribute to the Lithuanian nationals who suffered and lost their lives in deportation, promote mutual understanding and enable young people to get a closer look at past events and again show the society that young people care about their country’s history.