I would say it is very important to have. When you meet people from abroad, it is not necessarily that you come up with a detailed project that would work instantly and smoothly. But in the long run it’s important to build this kind of culture where we understand each other, compare, and try to learn. It’s a long process, but vital to have. Projects come to an end, but cultures remain.
NGOs are very important in this field, in a way, they represent the people. They are also the organisations that are neutral, they can criticise the system and what the government is doing. We make a lot of surveys, so we know what people think about different issues like security.
That is why we need to be part of the discussion.
We are interested in the usage of statistics from different regions. Yesterday, for example, we were introduced to the Baltic Resilience Program where they collect this sort of data. It’s always interesting to see how they collect the data. You are always thinking: “Should we also collect similar kind of data? How can we use it?”
Heikki Laurikainen works as Researcher at the Finnish National Rescue Association. At the BLP he represented a NGO perspective