Social cohesion by empowering volunteering during emergencies

ongoing

Social cohesion by Empowering volunteering during Emergencies (SEE) is a CERV Citizens’ engagement and participation project on empowering spontaneous shows of solidarity, so called “informal volunteering”, an expression of active citizenship encountered in many of the large scale emergencies due to the ever-increasing number of natural disasters. Professional or qualified aid workers and emergency structures are often unprepared to apply the large participatory potential that lies in this willingness for informal engagement, as there are many challenges to be solved regarding operational issues but also social dynamics in current volunteering and other emergency structures. SEE addresses the issue by means of an active citizens’ dialogue with and between formal and informal volunteers. By initiating this participatory process to foster mutual understanding of motivations, civic identity, individual interpretation of solidarity and social cohesion, we aim to enable these acts of civic engagement and ultimately contribute to improved aid under participation of as many active citizens as possible in the context of qualified civil protection operations.