EU Voluntary Humanitarian Aid Corps is piloted

The pilot phase to set up a European Voluntary Humanitarian Aid Corps was launched in Budapest, Hungary on 17 June. The vision of an EU voluntary corps is set out in the EU’s Treaty of Lisbon which came into force in 2009.

After extensive consultation with stakeholders on the design of the future corps, EU officials say that this test phase will build on existing volunteering schemes across EU member states. A total of 90 volunteers will receive training and will finally be deployed by the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) who have been selected to manage the pilots. An allocation of €1M was made in 2011 to enable the preparatory phase to get off the ground.

The first project will be mounted by Save the Children (UK) (plus Network of Humanitarian Assistance NOHA and Bioforce France as partners, and Caritas/Czech Republic, Save the Children/Denmark and Die Johanniter/Germany as associate organisations).

The French Red Cross (and other partners   the Austrian, Bulgarian and German Red Cross organisations and the International Federation of the Red Cross, IFRC, in Switzerland) are involved in another project which will identify, recruit, train, prepare and finally deploy 21 volunteers for six months. Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO/United Kingdom – with partners VSO/The Netherlands and Pro Vobis, the national Resource Centre for Volunteering in Romania) will mount the third project. Forty volunteers will be selected for deployment to disaster preparedness and post-conflict recovery sites.

"The pilot projects will give us a clear blueprint to move forward. We have two goals   first, to create an exciting opportunity for Europeans to make a difference in the world, and second, to bring collective value to individuals’ willingness to volunteer in the humanitarian area. I am excited that the European citizens’ solidarity with the world’s most vulnerable people will now have its first ambassadors   our volunteers”, said Kristalina Georgieva, European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response at the launch. Commissioner Georgieva will draft a legislative proposal on the design of the fully-fledged corps in the first few months of 2012.

For details of the scheme: http://ec.europa.eu/echo/policies/evhac_en.htm

Debra Percival