Project Duration: December, 2019 – May, 2022

Goal: The goal of the Project is to strengthen the organizational and technical capacities in volunteer management, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and organizational emergency preparedness. As a result, stronger Caritas organizations in Eastern and South Eastern Europe will be able to actively support the strengthening of capacities and resilience of vulnerable or disaster-affected communities in their respective countries.

Description: ABC-EUAV unites nine European Caritas organisations from EU, Eastern and South-Eastern European countries with the overall objective of enhancing existing organisational capacities in the field of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and emergency preparedness, as well as reinforcing effective and efficient volunteer management systems. The project will organise a range of activities including face-to-face workshops and simulations, peer learning events and continuous remote peer exchange. Staff members from the national levels of all project partners will participate in these activities and replicate the learnings at a local level. Whenever appropriate, practitioners from the local Caritas organisations will be directly included in the activities.

The need to further strengthening capacities on disaster-risk reduction (DRR) in third countries is recognised by the respective governments and by the EU. This project will promote community-managed disaster risk reduction, make risk management more effective by actively involving local communities and volunteers and, thereby, contribute to an increased resilience of vulnerable populations. Activities will cover disaster risk analysis, development of preparedness plans, working with state and nonstate actors and clarifying roles and responsibilities within each organisation.

In parallel the project will tackle volunteer management, an area where most project partners have some level of experience. This knowledge will be scaled up by establishing or improving procedures for the selection, training, deployment and day-to-day management of volunteers. Safeguarding and protection mainstreaming are other important topics to be addressed during the project. A particular attention will be paid to the certification for the EU Aid Volunteers Initiative (EUAV). The activities will integrate with one another by seeing how volunteers can be involved in the field of DRR and related awareness raising activities. The project builds on existing resources developed by Caritas Austria and Caritas Romania in previous EUAV projects.

Donors: European Commission – Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), Catholic Relief Services

Budget: Total Budget – 597,917.93€

Budget part of Armenian Caritas – 41,402.81€

Co-funded by CRS – 6.210$

Project manage: Armen Martirosyan