Section SOCIETY
TOPIC

MUNICIPALITY OF THERMI
Open protocols and tools for the education and training of voluntary organizations in the field of civil protection against natural disasters (forest fires) in Greece and Bulgaria (OUTLAND)

The general scope of OUTLAND Project, was the creation of a systematic framework for the education and training of Civil Protection Volunteer groups. This framework involves educational material, infrastructure, tools, methodologies tergeted to the sustainability of the Project's outcomes, even after its official ending.

The main target audience is the Civil Protection Volunteer groups in Greece and Bulgary.

The duration of the project was 24 months (17/02/2012 until 17/2/2014).

The project through its deliverables created an integrated package for the education, training and support of Civil Protection volunteer groups, which deal with Natural Disasters and especially Forest Fires. Up until this project, in Greece, the education and training of Civil Protection Volunteers groups was based soleley on the initiative of the groups. There is no established national procedure for the Civil Protection to follow in order to operate succesfully as well as securely.

OUTLAND Project created the package consisting of educational innovations as far as Greek standards are concerned, such as indoors and outdoors trianing units, educational material and new technology tools to support training and operational preparedness. All the deliverables, as a package, are the legacy which is inherited to the newly founded intermunicipal non- profit organization for the education, training and operational support of Civil Protection volunteers.

The project was a cooperation programme and the partners were:

1. Municipality of Thermi

2. Municipality of Komotini

3. Municipality of Zlatograd

4. Center of research and Technology Hellas- Institute of Telematics and Informatics

5. Greek Management Authority of "Dadia- Leykimi- Soufli Forest

6. Academy of Sciences - Institute of Mathematics and Informatics

The project's work team was the following employees of Municipality of Thermi:

1. Pantelidou Ioanna and

2. Pavlou Ioannis

The deliverables of the project were implemented by all partners.

  • Region of Central Macedonia, Greece,
  • Region of East Macedonia-Thrace, Greece,
  • National wide Institution having its premises at Sofia, Bulgaria,
  • South West Region, District of Smolyan, Bulgaria

The outputs of the project are:

  • The recording and evaluation of (a) the present status,  (b) specific needs and (c) expectations of the volunteers in training programs,materials and tools.
  • A center for training volunteers in the Municipality of Thermi along with an open-air training camp,
  • A unit for training volunteers in the Municipality of Komotini,
  • A cross-border training facility in Dadia National Park,
  • Equipment for 9 volunteers’ warehouses in Zlatograd,
  • The delivery of training handbooks, guidelines, databases and software on the management of natural disasters and personal safety issues,
  • A multilingual (Greek-Bulgarian-English) web site providing extensive information about the project and access to the e-learning platform,
  • A multi-lingual open source e- learning platform with training material (courses) and related documents
  • Application for smatphones, which enable the volunteer to connect to the central server and send or receive crucial information (photographs, local coordinates, remote coordinates, paths,etc.)

The benefits of the project are:

  • the increase of the level of operational readiness and safe intervention of the volunteer groups,
  • the improvement of the active participation and the eagerness to contribute to the volunteer groups,
  • the development/boosting of the volunteer’s movement in civil protection,
  • the creation of a good potential and synergy in the cross-border area for extending the training techniques.
  • the creation of conditions for the sustainability of education and training infrastructure to be developed under the project, after completion of the program, through the establishment of specific mechanisms and procedures, which essentially constitutes the novelty of the act.