Engaging informal volunteers and social support networks into crisis management system

More frequent disasters and economic pressures have increased the involvement of organised volunteers in ‘formal’ crisis response. Moreover, as organisational attachments are weakening, new forms of informal and self-organised volunteering are gaining importance. In this paper, the aim is to explore the engagement of informal volunteers, including social support networks, into crisis management system in Europe by an example of the BuildERS project countries Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Belgium. The primarily qualitative material collected in this project offers basis for this analysis. Over the period of September 2019 - February 2020, partners in these 8 European countries carried out desk research – using publicly accessible documents and secondary literature. To complement it, semi-structured expert interviews and the study of specific crises cases were conducted. Crisis cases included drinking water contamination in Nousiainen, Finland in January 2017; terrorist attack on government building in Oslo and at the island of Utøya, Norway on 22 July, 2011 ; increase in asylum seekers in 2015 in Sweden ; terrorist attack on Brussels airport and metro on 22 March, 2016; critical infrastructure failures in Southern Estonia in October 2019; flood disaster in Germany in June 2013; snowstorm in Hungary in March 2013; earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy , in April 2009. The analysis revealed that in all countries, the engagement of informal volunteers is not generally regulated and it is on ad hoc basis. Although there are national and local ‘social support network’ initiatives, there seems to be no systematic approach to building social support networks in any of the countries and it is not an important part of national crisis planning yet (with some possible exceptions).