FireVall - Volunteering Firefighting for all

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 Municipality Kabelsketal has 6 local volunteer fire brigades in their territory and is 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 this website.

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.