A draft five-year program to help preserve Latvian diaspora communities and to foster repatriation to Latvia has been released for public comment

A draft five-year program to help preserve Latvian diaspora communities and to foster repatriation to Latvia has been released for public comment by the Minister for Special Assignments for Social Integration Affairs in Rīga. The plan foresees spending more than LVL 300,000 annually (about USD 560,000) on a variety of efforts at cultural maintenance. "Considering that Latvians living abroad are an integral part of the Latvian nation, the diaspora nowadays has an important role of promoting Latvian culture and traditions on a world scale," states the plan, which is titled the Latvian Diaspora Support Programme. "It has great potential in creating a positive image of Latvia abroad." A variety of activities, from funding the work of Latvian teachers, to supporting mass media in the diaspora, to providing communities with folk costumes, would be supported under the program. The program has been in the works since December, led by a committee that includes representatives from the World Federation of Free Latvians (known in Latvian by the abbreviation PBLA), an official from the Latvian embassy in Moscow, as well as several ministry and other Latvian government officials. Latvian organizations in the diaspora have been strong supporters of various activities in Latvia, but it has only been in the past several years that the Latvian government has begun to back cultural maintenance work abroad. A number of ministries have funded activities in the West, while the Minister for Special Assignments for Social Integration Affairs has aided Latvian communities in Siberia.