In order to reduce the time of response in case of fires or other incidents and therefore decrease the number of people dying or being injured many European countries depend on volunteer fire brigades. They are of particular importance in rural areas, but especially there the number of people wanting to join volunteer fire fighting brigades is unfortunately decreasing. The aim of the "FireVall" project is therefore to counteract this trend by exchanging good practices among volunteer fire brigades across Europe. The good practices will not only focus on recruitment strategies in the different countries but also on the organization and financing of volunteer fire brigades. Some countries like Germany have a longstanding tradition in volunteer fire brigades. In other countries like Bulgaria, volunteer fire brigades gained more importance in recent years. In addition, the organization of volunteer fire brigades is very different in each country. Therefore, the partners can learn a lot from each other and their experiences enhancing the effectiveness and quality of the work carried out. The partnership is composed of 7 partners from 6 countries, who have extensive knowledge on the training of volunteer fire fighters and the organisation and funding of volunteer fire brigades in their country. The applicant Gemeinde Kabelsketal has 6 local volunteer fire brigades in their territory and will be supported by the second German partner Wisamar. The Danish and Croatian partners represent fire brigades with volunteer fire fighters and the Estonian partner is a volunteer fire brigade itself. The Hungarian and the Bulgarian partners are organisations supporting the regional development and cooperating very closely with the municipalities and their volunteer fire brigades. The exchange will focus on the following relevant questions: - How do volunteer fire brigades acquire new/ enough members, motivate and maintain them? - What is the public perception and the importance of volunteer fire brigades in the partner countries? - What are the legal regulations regarding volunteer fire brigades in the partner countries? - How are volunteer fire brigades organized and financed? - What is the educational framework/ training/ qualification behind volunteer fire brigades? As a result, good practices answering the aforementioned questions will be collected and discussed during 5 transnational meetings. After the meetings, the relevant good practices are shared with the local teams of volunteer firefighters to evaluate them regarding their usability and adaptability within the local contexts. Considering this feedback the good practices will be summarized, translated into the partner languages (DE, BG, DK, HU, HR, and EE) and presented on the project website. At local, regional, national and European level, the project addresses volunteer fire brigades and their members, since they can directly profit from the project results. They will be able to adapt the collected good practices in order to sustain and improve the activities and services in their countries. Hence, the volunteer fire brigades can increase the number of volunteer firefighters and improve the organisation of regular activities, training, information, monitoring, operational response and fire precaution measures. The secondary target group of the project is the general public, who will be made more aware of the importance of volunteer fire brigades and their need to be supported by the local communities. An important target group for dissemination are also policy and decision makers who are involved in the regulations and financing of volunteer fire brigades. The project results will remain free to use also after the end of the project. Volunteer fire brigades from countries not involved in the project might be interested to describe their systems or good practices on the project website as well. In addition, the lessons learned during this project can trigger new cooperation between volunteer fire brigades and can also be useful input for other projects.
In order to reduce the time of response in case of fires or other incidents and therefore decrease the number of people dying or being injured, many European countries depend on volunteer fire brigades. They are of particular importance in rural areas, but especially there the number of people willing to join volunteer fire brigades is unfortunately decreasing. Some countries like Germany have a longstanding tradition in volunteer fire brigades. In other countries like Bulgaria, volunteer fire brigades gained more importance in recent years. In addition, the organization of volunteer fire brigades is very different in each country. Therefore, the aim of the "FireVall" project was to exchange good practices among volunteer fire brigades across Europe focused on recruitment strategies in the different countries as well as on the organization and financing of volunteer fire brigades. The partners learned a lot from each other and their experiences enhancing the effectiveness and quality of the work carried out. The partnership was composed of 7 partners from 6 countries, who have extensive knowledge on the training of volunteer fire fighters and the organisation and funding of volunteer fire brigades in their country. The applicant Gemeinde Kabelsketal has 6 local volunteer fire brigades in their territory and has been be supported by the second German partner Wisamar. The Danish and Croatian partners represent fire brigades with volunteer fire fighters and the Estonian partner is a volunteer fire brigade itself. The Hungarian and the Bulgarian partners are organisations supporting the regional development and cooperating very closely with the municipalities and their volunteer fire brigades. During the lifetime of the project, the partnership met 5 times. Each transnational meeting had a different central theme based on one of the following relevant questions: - What is the public perception and the importance of volunteer fire brigades in the partner countries? - What are the legal regulations regarding volunteer fire brigades in the partner countries? - How do volunteer fire brigades acquire new/ enough members, motivate and maintain them? - How are volunteer fire brigades organized and financed? - What is the educational framework/ training/ qualification behind volunteer fire brigades? As a result, good practices answering the aforementioned questions have be collected and shared with the local teams of volunteer firefighters in order to evaluate them regarding their usability and adaptability within the local contexts. Considering this feedback, the good practices were summarized and translated into the partner languages (DE, BG, DK, HU, CRO and EE). To make these results accessible for a wider public, they are published on the project website, where they remain free to use also after the end of the project. During the meetings, the partners also had the chance to get more insight into the system of volunteer fire brigades within the country where the respective meeting took place. In this way, they were able to exchange, discuss and compare the local circumstances with their colleagues on site as well as with local stakeholders and policy makers. At local, regional, national and European level, the project addressed volunteer fire brigades and their members, since they can profit directly from the project results. They are able to adapt the collected good practices in order to sustain and improve the activities and services in their countries. Hence, the volunteer fire brigades can increase the number of volunteer firefighters and improve the organisation of regular activities, training, information, monitoring, operational response and fire precaution measures. The secondary target group of the project was the general public, who has been made more aware of the importance of volunteer fire brigades and their need to be supported by the local communities mainly through the diverse dissemination activities. An important target group for dissemination were also policy and decision makers who are involved in the regulations and financing of volunteer fire brigades. They can adapt the collected good practices can be adapted in order to find starting points for a (more) effective support and funding of volunteer fire brigades in their region. The lessons learned and the contacts made during the project already triggered new ideas for cooperation between volunteer fire brigades.