RiA-ENGAGE kicks off: strengthening disaster preparedness with civil society in the Baltic Sea Region and Ukraine

On 14 October 2025, the new project RiA-ENGAGE (Resilience in Action – Advancing Disaster Preparedness through Civil Society Engagement) held its online kick-off meeting, bringing together partners from the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) and Ukraine. Led by the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS), the project aims to strengthen disaster risk reduction (DRR) by enabling public authorities and civil society actors to work together more systematically – in both the BSR and Ukraine – and by building direct links to the Interreg-funded CREWS project.

Traditionally, disaster management in Europe has focused on formal state actors. However, both wartime experience in Ukraine and recent extreme weather events across the BSR have clearly demonstrated the limitations of this approach and the critical role of volunteers, NGOs and community organisations in crisis response and preparedness.

RiA-ENGAGE builds directly on previous cooperation, especially on the Civil Protection Faculty project funded by the Swedish Institute, where VOVCHOK Folk High School was a key partner. That project successfully tested innovative formats for training, peer learning and civil–public cooperation in crisis preparedness. RiA-ENGAGE will now take these experiences further, developing cooperation mechanisms and training concepts that can be used by local and regional authorities together with civil society organisations in both peace-time and crisis conditions, including military threats and extreme weather scenarios.

Strategically linked to the CREWS project, RiA-ENGAGE will:

• Promote cross-border exchange between BSR countries and Ukraine on community disaster preparedness.
• Leverage BSR expertise in structured state–civil cooperation while learning from Ukraine’s decentralized, grassroots-driven civil society and its wartime experience.
• Share best practices and challenges to shape collaborative models between public authorities and civil society.
• Contribute to national DRR policies that better integrate civil society and strengthen societal resilience.

Key activities include:

• Developing a template for cooperation mechanisms between public authorities and civil society in DRR.
• Designing a training programme and materials on this cooperation model.
• Piloting the model in military and extreme weather scenarios.
• Building knowledge among public authorities and NGOs about the cooperation mechanism.
• Linking project results to the policy level through stakeholder consultations.

Project duration: September 2025 – August 2027

Partners:

• Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS)
• Swedish Civil Defence League
• Estonian Rescue Association
• VOVCHOK Folk High School

Funding:
RiA-ENGAGE is funded by the Swedish Institute.

Contact:
Vineta Polatside, CBSS Senior Adviser, Safe & Secure Region team
E-mail: vineta.polatside@cbss.org