The project Inclusive Disaster Resilience Index (INDRIX) held its final conference on 14 February. The project consortium and stakeholder representatives came together in Brussels to review the project’s results and make recommendations for follow-up steps.

Over the course of its two-year project timeframe, the EU co-funded project INDRIX developed an index of social resilience. A particular focus was on the needs of particularly vulnerable groups in case of disasters – such as the Elderly or people with disabilities. In this respect, the project was supported by Italian NGOs FISH and Auser.

The index was developed with a focus on community resilience, hence focusing first on available statistical data for standardised regional units (“NUTS2” level). The project also found this available data insufficient and, in some cases, too unfocused (no “NUTS3”, the next smaller level, data available) and thus developed a second part of the index that relies on survey data to fill in the gaps. The resulting information was then visualised using the so called “Indrix Resilience Map”, an easy to use graphical interface that lets interested parties explore the wealth of data brought together by INDRIX.

The dimensions identified as part of the index development were also used in the development of an additional questionnaire that aims at civil protection projects. With this additional questionnaire, project coordinators, or applicants, can check which aspects of resilience are most covered by their project or project idea. Conversely, it also shows the aspects of resilience not considered. This can be a tool for project development and evaluation – particularly in combination with the identified regional weaknesses in resilience via the first and second part of the index.

As a conclusion to the project, the consortium presented several recommendations and possible follow-ups. These also included the need to improve the availability of statistical data, as only systematic surveying of all aspects of disaster resilience can offer complete comparability across Europe. In particular, data relevant for people with disabilities in disaster situations was lacking.

The coordination of the project was conducted by the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Input from the world of civil protection and social services was provided by SAM.I. organisations ANPAS, WK and LSA, as well as the SAM.I. GS. Hamburg-based tech company Ubilabs created the data visualisation tool “Indrix Resilience Map”.

More information is available on the project website.

On the weekend of 23-25 March, SAM.I. was at the Civil Protect trade fair in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy.

South Tyrolean SAM.I. member organisation White Cross (WK), who have been present at the regular civil protection trade fair for many years, invited the network join their exhibition space.

At the SAM.I. info booth, visitors of the trade fair could learn about the network and receive information about concluded European projects, such as ADAPT or INDRIX. Videos of large joint European events such as the Contest 2016 or the annual first aid flash mobs were also shown.

The booth was shared with the colleagues from ANPAS, who were also invited to the White Cross’s presence at Civil Protect 2018 – therefore WK had both their national as well as their European network present in this year’s exhibition.

The SAM.I. competence centre for first aid met from 25-26 March in Kaunas, Lithuania. The local branch of LSB hosted the meeting for the first time.

The participants from ASBÖ, DPA, LSB and WK took further steps in planning the follow-up to 2016s successful first aid awareness event in Brussels. The follow-up event, scheduled to take place in the context of Restart-a-Heart-Day 2018, will serve to reiterate the expert group’s recommendation to foster EU-wide recognition of first aid certificates.

Other topics on the agenda included the upcoming publication of the revised SAM.I. internal certificate and a recently conceptualised project application for a European train-the-trainer exchange with a focus on volunteering.

The next meeting is set to take place in July. LSB will reprise their role as hosting organisation.

On 22 May, representatives of three SAM.I. organisations met to discuss the follow-up to the Rescue Camp that was held last year in Mörbisch am See, Austria.

The first SAM.I. Rescue Camp, hosted by ASB Austria and co-organised by ASB and White Cross, took place in May 2016 on the banks of Lake Neusiedl in Burgenland state of Austria. After the resounding success of the event and overall very positive feedback from the participants, it was decided to hold a second Rescue Camp, with ASBÖ and its Burgenland branch reprising their role as hosts.

As the Rescue Camp was an entirely new international event, the co-organisers had compiled an evaluation report in the aftermath of the event. Several lessons-learned and other potential improvements will guide the organising group in setting up the second interation of the outdoor exercise, where rescue service teams of professionals and professionally trained volunteers will have to go through several training scenarios. Just like at the first event, the performance of the teams will be evaluated by international jurors.

The second rescue camp will coincide with the Samaritan Forum 2019 from 14-18 August 2019, which will be hosted nearby, thereby complementing the programme of the international conference with a practical showcase of international Samaritan collaboration.

From 4 to 6 May the SAM.I presidium came to Rome to meet at the offices of ANPAS. At the meeting the current and future activites of the SAM.I network were planned and coordinated

Current matters included the Samaritan Contest which will take part in Denmark and Germany this August. The presidium also discussed the planning of the next SAM.I Forum which will take place in Burgenland, Austria next year. Also, SAM.I plans to host a parliamentary evening in Brussels this autumn, where the current political challenges that are most relevant to the SAM.I members will be addressed.

Further topics included the competence centers, the introduction of a travel fund to increase participation in international meetings and several applications by SAM.I. and its members for upcoming EU projects.

The presidium also adopted a new revision of the SAM.I. network’s guiding principles.

The next meeting of the presidium will take place on the sidelines of the Contest at the end of August in Flensburg.

The SAM.I. Competence Centre First Aid met in Kaunas, Lithuania from 13-14 July 2018. The central point on the agenda was the preparation of a repetition of 2016’s successful first aid event in Brussels, on the occasion of “Restart-a-Heart-Day” 2018.

The Kaunas branch of LSB reprised their role as host of the meeting. The participants discussed new information on efforts by other stakeholders to achieve recognition of First Aid courses among EU member states and also spoke about the Samaritan Contest 2018, scheduled for August 24-27.

However, the central issue was the planned event in Brussels. Similar to 2016, the group plans to hold first aid courses for Members of the European Parliament and other relevant Brussels-based stakeholders. To accommodate the fact, that the schedules of the target group can be expected to be busy, the CC First Aid has developed short course forms just for this occastion, concentrating on the most important first aid measures such as CPR or AED usage. Conciding with the ERC-promoted “Restart-a-Heart-Day”, the first aid experts of the SAM.I. member organisations want to demonstrate that some basic first aid measures are easy to learn for everyone.

By giving the courses, based on a common curriculum, via an international team of trainers, they also would like to set a reminder that, while quality first aid education can nowadays be received in all EU member states, recognition is still an unnecessarily complicated case-by-case procedure. The SAM.I. members promote that a recognition mechanism using the pre-existing European Qualifications Framework be explored by decision-makers on the European and respective national levels and have put down this proposal in a recommendation paper that was published in 2016.

More information on the event is available here.

Almost 200 Samaritans, guest, helpers and participants came together in Flensburg from 24-27 August 2018 for the 7th Samaritan Contest. 18 teams of young people from eight different countries demonstrated their skills in first aid and got to know their counterparts from all over Europe.

Photo by ASB/Hannibal

The Samaritan Contest is SAM.I.’s biennial youth competition in first aid. Keeping with the truly cross-border spirit of the previous Contest, the Contest 2018 was co-hosted by two SAM.I. member organisations again: ASB Germany, specifically the Schleswig-Holstein branch of their youth organisation ASJ, and the Danish People’s Aid.

Photo by ASB/Hannibal

Over the course of the weekend, the close to 100 youths had to complete various tasks.

The core of the Contest certainly where the first aid and dexterity tasks, that were located in and around the centre of Flensburg. The teams had to cope with a case of stroke, had to perform CPR, take care of a group of people after a fight had broken out, and had to help people who accidentally fell into the waters of Flensburg’s harbour. While finding their way from one station to the next, they had to fulfill additional tasks that were integrated into a city game.

The youths also had to prepare a creative task – short stage plays that involved a first aid emergency situation. Keeping with the maritime location of this year’s Contest, the topic was “Pirates of the Baltic Sea”. While the creative tasks is not part of the overall score, the audience chose their favourite plays of the evening – the teams from ANPAS and SFOP were tied for first place.

On 26 August, the contestants crossed the border to Denmark to visit an open-air museum near Sønderborg and to spend some spare time in the city centre. This trip was followed by the award ceremony back in Flensburg.

The first three placed teams in group A (12-15 years) were ASBÖ (3rd), ASB (2nd), and WK (1st). The youths from WK also won first place in group B (16-27 years), with FSR (2nd) and ASB (3rd) close behind on the podium.

The winners in the individual ranking where Alexander Gruber (WK) in group A and Bogdan Andrei Dumitras (FSR) in group B.

The challenge cup, a travelling trophy that only takes the score in first aid tasks into account, went th the B-Team of ASB.

SAM.I. Secretary General Ivo Bonamico congratulated the winners and noted that the Samaritan Contest goes far beyond the question of who makes it to the winner’s podium: “The young people’s engagement, their willingness to learn and to help where help is needed, and the fact that they come together here to form international friendships deserves appreciation and respect far beyond the score of the competition. My thanks to the German and Danish Samaritans for organising this great weekend event!”

The next Samaritan Contest will take place in 2020 in South Tyrol.

The SAM.I. presidium met on the sidelines of the Samaritan Contest in Flensburg, Germany on 25 August 2018.

The main item on the agenda were the preparations for the planned parliamentary evening on 17 October in Brussels. The members of the presidium discussed the agenda and the individual keynotes to be held. They also discussed the status quo of the SAM.I. competence centres.

The parliamentary evening on 17 October meant to introduce the SAM.I. network and showcase several current issues that concern the SAM.I. members to an audience of European politicians and additional stakeholders. Topics will include current challenges for not-for-profit organisations regarding certain aspects of the sustainable provision of social services, volunteers in civil protection and first aid in Europe.

The keynotes of the SAM.I.-speakers will be rounded off by an academic assessment by Hans Lichtsteiner, professor for NGO management at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland and closing remarks by the European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, Christos Stylianides.

More information on the event is available here.

On the occasion of Restart-a-Heart-Day 2018, several SAM.I. member organisations sent trainers to Brussels to offer first aid courses in the European quarter.

The courses were aimed at parliamentary offices, European civil servants and staff of other Brussels-based NGOs. The SAM.I. organisations used Restart-a-Heart-Day to set a statement that a few simple, yet potentially life-saving, first aid measures can be easily learned by everybody. Special short courses where conceptualised beforehand by the Competence Centre (CC) First Aid to accommodate the participants’ busy schedules.

Four organisations (ASB, ASBÖ, DPA & WK) sent trainers to teach a total of seven courses with lengths between one and three hours, with the one hour course concentrating exclusively on CPR and the longer courses adding additional first aid measures to the curriculum.

The courses also served as a reminder of the Competence Centre First Aid’s position on cross-border recognition of first aid certificates in Europe. The international team of first aid trainers working together was a practical showcase that the factual differences in first aid training in the EU are minimal and obstacles to recognition are thus mostly administrative. The CC First Aid’s recommendation paper on the matter is available here.

The feedback received from participants in the courses was unanimously positive. At one of their next sessions, the CC First Aid will discuss to reprise the event again in two years.

Participants can download the course materials again here.

Photos: Lukas Innerhofer / WK

On 17 October, SAMARITAN INTERNATIONAL held a parliamentary evening in Brussels to present several current issues to an audience of MEPs, NGO representatives and other Brussels-based stakeholders. Christos Stylianides, European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis management, held the closing remarks.

The SAM.I., its member organisations and the competence centres of the network had prepared keynotes on several current topics. The event was held on the premises of the European Region Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino in Brussels. The director of the South Tyrolean representation, Vesna Caminades, welcomed the guests and moderated the evening

To begin, Fabrizio Pregliasco, head of the Competence Centre Civil Protection presented the  continued European support for cross-border civil protection projects, several of which had been conducted by SAM.I. and/or its members over the past few years.

This was followed by a talk by Thomas Pedersen, head of the Competence Centre First Aid. He summarised the core issue at the heart of the CC First Aid’s 2016 recommendation paper “Single European First Aid – Cross-Border First Responders” that advocates for a simpler cross-border recognition of first aid certificates in Europe on the basis of the European Qualification Framework.

Afterwards, a guest keynote by Hans Lichtsteiner, professor for not-for-profit organisation (NPO) management at the University of Fribourg/Switzerland, made clear the added value of NPOs for society as a whole and also for politics in particular.

Building on the previous talk, SAM.I. President Knut Fleckenstein, MEP, held the final talk, in which he presented the network’s position on sustainably upholding the civic benefits of charitable NPOs in Europe. Recently, the special status such organisations enjoy to safekeep these benefits has been repeatedly challenged in several European countries. Most recent examples include court cases on European procurement law, but other policy fields are just at much at risk of being affected. Fleckenstein presented the network’s proposal to establish a European law on charitability, to remove the legal uncertainty that the competing definitions of charitability in Europe create at the moment. A short position paper on this issue is available here.

The evening was closed by Commissioner Christos Stylianides, who the gathered SAM.I. representatives where especially happy to welcome at the event. In his remarks, the Commissioner addressed the issues presented by the previous speakers and expressed special appreciation for volunteers in European NPOs, whom he thanked for their role in creating and living European solidarity.

The SAM.I. member organisations intend to focus their European advocacy work in the coming years on the presented topics. In this sense, the event served as a kick-off for more activities to come.

The slides of all presentations of the evening event are available here.