2.2.8 Germany

International cooperation

The volunteer organisation replied that they do not participate in international cooperation in the field of civil protection in the Baltic Sea Region. Similarly, neither authority participates in international cooperation in civil protection in the Baltic Sea Region.

International cooperation can be good support for promoting volunteering and for sharing the best practices about volunteering activities as well as learning from others and incorporating their best practices into our system. Authority.

Biggest challenges involving volunteers

The respondents were given the possibility to express their opinion about the biggest challenge to increasing volunteer involvement in the field of civil protection in Lithuania. The main concerns of the volunteer organisation involved motivation, the lack of exercises, and there being no umbrella organisation for all NGOs. One authority replied that enough time needs to be devoted to working with volunteers.

Summary of the results

To sum up the results for Lithuania, the main problem is that there was a huge lack of interest in participating in the questionnaire and interviews, especially by those volunteer organisations and authorities that are directly involved in civil protection tasks. So, the overall picture for Lithuania in this research is really lacking and inadequate.

Introduction

In all, twenty-one people responded to the questionnaire: ten represented volunteer organisations and eleven the authorities. Four interviews were conducted, all of which with people representing different German firefighting and civil service authorities. The excerpts from these interviews are not direct quotations. Rather, they represent the interviewers’ summaries

of the answers and the opinions expressed during the interviews. All volunteer organisations are fire brigades; most operate at the municipal level, four at the national level and two at the regional level. The authorities mostly come from the rescue/emergency services, but other civil protection authorities also participated. The municipal, regional and federal levels were all represented.

Most of the participating volunteer organisations have anywhere from twenty to fifty members, but one individual organisation has 38 000 members.

According to one of the interviewees, volunteering in firefighting is a long, important and widespread tradition in Germany.

Having 1.2 million volunteer firefighters is a totally different scale than what is done in other countries. Preserving this system of volunteer fire brigades is very important. Authority.

The prevalence of cooperation and contracts

While most of the volunteer organisations and all of the authorities regard their cooperation relationships to be good or very good, two volunteer organisations replied that it is neither good nor bad, and no one considered it to be bad.

Eight volunteer organisations have contracts with the rescue and emergency services, five with the police, one with the Border Guard and one with the Federal Agency for Technical Relief THW (Technisches Hilfswerk). One replied that their organisation is a part of the authority. Only one of the volunteer organisations replied that their organisation is not involved in the contingency plans of the associated authorities for major disasters. Almost all volunteer organisations cooperate with the rescue/emergency services and with the police. In all, the Border Guard, the THW and the risk management authority Katastrophenschutz only gave four answers. The COVID-19 pandemic has generally affected society both nationally and internationally, but it has also affected the cooperation of volunteer organisations with the authorities. Half of the respondents replied that the pandemic has increased cooperation. The rest of the respondents mostly replied that it has not made much of a difference.

This is in sharp contrast to the authorities, among whom the majority believe that the pandemic has not affected their cooperation.

What kind of tasks were volunteers involved in during the past three years in Germany?

Firefighting

Rescue tasks (Concerning people, property and/or environment Fire prevention (Provision og information on fire safety, work done with fire safety equipment etc.) Support services (for example: temporary shelters, catering, clothing to vulnerable persons, staff…

Serch and rescue

Other prevention (general guidance of citizens concerning safety, security, resilience and… Information gathering and information spreading to citizens in case of disasters or major emergencies

Something else, what 0 1

1

2

2 3

3 4

4 4 5

5 6 8 9

9

Volunteers Authorities

Figure 9: Tasks of the German volunteers. Ten volunteer leaders and ten authorities replied. The answer in the category ‘Something else, what?’ was elaborated as ‘beach cleaning’ and ‘oil spill response’.

Figure 10: Independent tasks of the German volunteers. Ten volunteer leaders replied.

What kind of tasks do volunteers in your organisation carry out in Germany independent of the authorities?

Firefighting

Fire prevention (provision of information on fire safety, work done with fire safety equipment etc.) Rescue tasks (concerning people, property and/or environment)

Search and rescue

Prevention concerning rescue tasks other than fire prevention (provision of information and guidance to the… Information gathering and information spreading to citizens in case of disasters or major emergencies

Something else, what 2 3

3

3 4 5

Training available for volunteers and needs for improvement

All respondents, with the exception of one volunteer organisation, replied that they provide training for volunteers in the field of civil protection. The training matches the tasks in which the volunteers participate. While six volunteer organisations find that their training is sufficient, three do not. Except for ‘fire prevention’ and ‘Something else, what’, which received zero mentions, all other topics received one reply each regarding the need for more training.

Exercises with the authorities

Almost all respondents replied that volunteers and the authorities hold joint exercises. Only one volunteer organisation answered that they do not.

Recruiting and challenges of recruiting

Fifteen of the twenty-one respondents replied that they recruit volunteers. Of them six have difficulties in recruiting enough volunteers and three could not answer.

Cooperation with spontaneous volunteers

Three organisations of each type (six in total) have cooperated with spontaneous volunteers during the past three years.

Funding sources and sufficiency of funding

While nine volunteer organisations are financed by the state, six receive funding from municipalities and two receive private donations. None of the organisations is funded by membership fees or other sources, and no one said that their organisation does not get any funding. The replies regarding the sufficiency of funds are divided almost equally between ‘sufficient’, ‘insufficient’, and ‘don’t know’ – slightly tilting towards ‘yes’ (they are sufficient).

Insurance practices

Almost all respondents to the questionnaire replied that volunteers are covered by insurance. Only one volunteer organisation answered that they are not. The respondents generally agreed that the state provides insurance for volunteers that covers most injuries and damage, but a few from each group replied that the employers of the volunteers provide it, particularly in cases involving third parties. All other replies received zero to two answers, (at the most, one answer from each type of organisation) except that ‘Volunteer organisations or entities that organise volunteers’ also seem to be regularly insured for damage to third parties.

International cooperation

International cooperation seems to be much more common among the authorities than the volunteers. Whereas only two volunteer organisations replied that they participate in such cooperation, seven authorities said they did. Two volunteer organisations and one authority did not know whether they cooperate internationally. Among the volunteers, firefighting is overwhelmingly the most common area of cooperation, but rescue tasks and search and rescue activities are relatively common as well. All other topics received one reply from a volunteer organisation, except for tasks related to ‘crisis communications’ and ‘Something else, what?’. Among the authorities the most common area of international cooperation is ‘planning activities in case of cross-border emergencies’, while ‘firefighting’, ‘rescue tasks’ and ‘other prevention’ are also quite common – each being carried out by about half of the authorities that cooperate internationally. The remaining possible answers received one to two mentions, with the clarification on ‘Something else, what?’ being ‘oil spill response’.

Regarding international cooperation, two main benefits were emphasised by the interviewees. These were the exchange of ideas and experiences as well as the ability to exchange manpower and capabilities as needed. The following excerpt shows an example of the way an interviewee benefited from an exchange of know-how with another country.

New ideas. The response time in Hessen is supposed to be ten minutes. This however is not always possible, especially in the countryside during the day. In some places in Finland, the required response time is 45 minutes. This means that they need to find other ways of improving the security level, such as implementing smoke detectors and fire escapes. Things such as these are

ways that countries can exchange experience and improve general safety levels. Authority

All interviewees expressed an interest in more international cooperation, and most of them did this along with an admission that currently their organisation is not sufficiently involved in international cooperation.

The Berlin Fire Department has spent a long time looking inwards in order to join the eastern and western parts of the city that were separated during the cold war. This did not leave a lot of resources for external cooperation, which has only in recent years become a point of focus for the department. Authority

Biggest challenges involving volunteers

Most replies from the volunteers to this question are quite brief and address a lack of motivation. One volunteer organisation regards getting recognised for volunteering by their employer as a challenge and another one suggests lowering the standards of physical fitness for specific tasks in order to make them more attractive.

The authorities’ answers are a little more diverse and include some overlapping categories to some degree.

First is the issue of rural depopulation. More and more jobs are in the city, which means that people either live in the city or have long commutes. This affects both the number of volunteers that are available in rural areas as well as the response times of volunteer fire departments in these areas, since it takes a long time for the volunteers to get to the rural fire stations from their jobs in the city.

An issue which is closely related to rural depopulation involves the generation gap. Many respondents representing the authorities expressed the idea that younger people are less interested in volunteer work and/or that their work and everyday lives are less compatible with volunteering. Yet another issue associated with rural depopulation is the fact that most young people move around for education, which means that there are several chances that they will leave a volunteer organisation without joining a new one, even though there might be similar organisations close to their new homes.

The last category is a combination of funding and training. Three respondents replied that there are issues with the training of volunteers. While one of them did not give any reason for this, another one blames it on a lack of time caused by ‘daily jobs’, and the third one mentions it as one among a range of issues caused by insufficient funding. Another respondent also mentions the lack of funding but focuses on the problems this causes for material and recruitment.

In addition to these categories there is one outlier. One respondent said that a low number of deployments causes a loss of important expertise, since experience is not passed on from older volunteers to new ones. These opinions are shared by most of the interviewees as shown by the following excerpts.

The biggest challenge is probably finding people who are able and willing to spend their time on hard and dangerous work that does not pay. This challenge is getting bigger because individualism is making people more focused on themselves and less willing to help society without gaining something themselves.

In some of the inner-city fire stations there are so many volunteers that they cannot accept any more, but in the suburbs, they are having problems finding enough of them. Authority Society is changing. In the past it was a great feeling for people to help other people. Today people look out more for themselves and spend more time on family activities and are busier in their jobs. They are less inclined to help the community. It seems to also be a generational issue. Younger people are more interested in their family and their job is not the most important thing in their lives. Authority

The challenges are probably the same as everywhere: how to get younger generations involved and interested, and how to have vehicles, equipment and stations updated. Authority.

The interviewees had a range of possible solutions that can at least mitigate the issues. These solutions are presented here in the order that corresponds to the category of the challenge (as presented above).

Many of the interviewees mentioned the German Youth Fire Brigades as a strong structure that promotes volunteering. These programs spark the

interests of young people early and keep it strong until they are old enough to join a fire department, volunteer or do something else.

Other suggestions included recruitment and/or public relations campaigns that emphasise the positive that volunteering in fire and rescue activities does for the community as well as focusing on women and immigrants. One interviewee also proposed granting volunteers free access to public transport and leisure activities such as organised sports, fitness centres or swimming pools. Another mentioned their local tradition of offering the employers of volunteers a small monetary compensation if their employees are called out to respond to emergencies. The interviewee did not know whether any employers actually asked to receive this compensation, but it would be a nice gesture to volunteers and their employers.

Summary of the results

There is a strong tradition of volunteering in fire and rescue activities in Germany. Issues regarding funding, urbanisation and a change in the values and habits of younger generations challenge this tradition.

While these issues cannot be controlled by civil service organisations, they must still do what they can to mitigate their effects.

International cooperation is not very usual in Germany, particularly among volunteer organisations. This is a matter that the interviewees regard as a shortcoming that needs to be corrected.