Promoting volunteerism from young ages

The CDSEPR as part of the activities from the project “Cross-Border Cooperation in Forest Firefighting”, together with the partners from Bulgaria, has carried out an information campaign to promote firefighting. Being a volunteer firefighter is an honor, a selfless commitment to saving human life, nature, and homes. The love for voluntary firefighting should be instilled from a very young age.

 

On the day of the firefighters, when the professional firefighters officially received their personal protective equipment for protection from forest fires, children from the primary school from Valandovo visited the Territorial Firefighting Unit in their municipality. The children together with the Mayor of Valandovo, Mr. Pero Kostadinov, and the Director of the Center, Ms. Julieta Gjurkova had the opportunity to see and try the new equipment for extinguishing forest fires, to learn what it means to be a firefighter, how to extinguish fire, what should be done when the phone rings for a fire alarm, etc. The event was a great opportunity to promote how from an early age children are encouraged to become heroes – volunteer firefighters in the community. The possibility of extinguishing the simulated fire, as well as driving with the vehicles of the fire brigade was a special pleasure and great joy for the children, but also for the firefighters who received very sincere children’s smiles in return. Volunteering is the moment of raising of civic awareness for wider social engagement for the benefit of the community in which we live, one of the most essential and most useful activities that we as human beings can undertake from a very young age.

The project for “Cross-Border Cooperation in Forest Fire Fighting” is co-funded by the European Union through the Interreg IPA Cross-Border Cooperation Program between the Republic of Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia 2014-2020 and is implemented by the Centre for Development of the South-East Planning Region, in partnership with the Association of Southwest Municipalities, Blagoevgrad, Republic of Bulgaria.

Alone we can’t do as much as we can do together!

Completely new equipment for firefighters from the region for dealing with forest fires

The Centre for development of the South-East planning region started with the implementation of the project “Cross-Border cooperation in dealing with the forest fires” within the Programme for cross-border cooperation R. Bulgaria – R. North Macedonia 2014 – 2020. The Centre for development of the South-East planning region will implement the project with the Association of Southwestern Municipalities of Blagoevgrad, Republic of Bulgaria, as a Lead Partner in the implementation of the project.

Within the project, complete personal protective equipment for forest fires will be procured for all firefighters from the South-East planning region, which is currently not available to any of the firefighting units in the region. Professional forest fire equipment will be procured which includes overalls, blankets, boots, gloves, helmets made especially for forest fires, anti-smoke protective masks and balaclava fireproof protection masks. Pumps, firefighter hoses and motor saw will be procured for each of the brigades in the region. This equipment will significantly improve the safety and functionality of firefighters in the region, and also will improve their on time and appropriate response to forest fires that cause enormous damage, destroy our forest, nature and as is well known from the past, there have been human sacrifice.

In addition to the procurement of equipment, a cross-border network will be created for prevention and response to natural and environmental hazards, which will include representatives of municipal territorial firefighting units and volunteer communities from both countries whose goal is to create good coordination and structure for prevention and appropriate disaster response with special emphasis on forest fires. For some of the network members, a series of trainings (6 in total) by internationally certified is planned. An information and media campaign will be launched to promote volunteerism and prevent forest fires.

Total value of the project is 395.361 euros, out of which the budget of the Centre for development of the South-East planning region is 197.602 euros. The project will be implemented for 24 months.