Project “ReSit” is almost concluded

by Kaspars Vārpiņš |kaspars.varpins@liepaja.lv

On 11 March 2021, in online format, took place the Final event of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland funded project ”ReSit“ – Situational Picture of Volunteerism for Societal Resilience in the Baltic Sea Region – where partners from The Finnish National Rescue Association SPEK, Liepaja Municipal Police (who represented as well the UBC Safe Cities Commission), Frederiksborg Brand og Redning (Denmark) and Beredksabsforbundet (Danish Civil Protection League) aimed to create a knowledge base and recommendations to develop the cooperation and joint preparedness of authorities, volunteer organisations and citizens for man-made and natural disasters in the Baltic Sea region.

During the project a research was made and a report was prepared, which draws a situational picture of volunteerism in the field of civil protection in 10 Baltic Sea countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany and Russia. During the research a questionnaire was carried out were a total of 138 respondents (76 volunteer organisation leaders and 62 authorities) answered the prepared questions and altogether 13 authorities and 5 leaders of volunteer organisations were interviewed. The Final Report is now at its layout designing phase and as soon as it will be ready and published, information will be sent through UBC network.

Previously mentioned final event of the project which took place online was organized to highlight the three main results and recommendations of the project: Structures and coordination, Recruiting and motivating volunteers, International cooperation. After the presentations of each of the result, they were discussed by authorities and volunteer representatives. The recording of the Final event is available in YouTube - https://youtu.be/GfaCFXLLegs

The main conclusions of the project where, that cooperation between volunteers and authorities is reported to be common in the region and that the volunteers participate in a wide range of tasks, the most common being firefighting and rescue tasks. There is education available for volunteers, still improvement is needed concerning major disasters and general guidance of citizens. One of the highlighted problem is challenges of recruiting volunteers and keeping them motivated.

Conclusions indicated, that the cooperation with spontaneous volunteers is a growing phenomena and the plans of the spontaneous volunteer involvement should be prepared in advance. There are clearly improvements needed to ensure that the financial resources are sufficient in organisations for tasks in civil protection. More about the research you’ll be able to find out when the Final Report will be published.