Today, on Mondo\u2019s initiation, a network of civil society organisations (CSO) is being established with the aim of increasing organisations\u2019 readiness to provide better assistance in the event of a crisis in Estonia. The need to create such a network comes from the Ukrainian experience. During a full-scale war, Ukrainian CSOs are carrying out several nationally important tasks.<\/p>\n
The Estonian\u0161 network brings together organisations that during the peacetime hold various important roles in society, from mental health activities to environmental protection and supporting apartment associations. In case of an emergency CSOs would need to rethink their role and work.<\/p>\n
Overview of the humanitarian aid system<\/strong><\/p>\n The goal of the network is mainly to raise Estonian CSOs\u2019 awareness of the humanitarian aid system and delivery principles, to initiate mutual coordination and relationship maintenance, and to jointly map the potential roles and operational capacity of the organisations belonging to the network in the event of a major humanitarian crisis when the government needs support.<\/p>\n \u201cAn important lesson for us is Ukraine, where since the beginning of the full-scale war, several services previously handled by the state have shifted to being supported by CSOs. Likewise, local organisations familiar with humanitarian aid have been able to provide the fastest solutions and support, thereby reducing the number of casualties and supporting the functioning of the state apparatus in a crisis where there is usually a lot of confusion, needs for help have skyrocketed, and the state\u2019s capacity to support and react has simultaneously dropped. Organisations with very different backgrounds can be important partners and, if necessary, support for the state in such crises,\u201d said Triinu Ossinovski, member of Mondo\u2019s board.<\/p>\n The Ukrainian state has managed to function even in the context of a full-scale war, yet there are very important areas and topics that the government does not have capacity to handle. Thus, CSOs in Ukraine have played a major role, for example, in ensuring access to education, comprehensive support for internally displaced persons, organising evacuations, providing mental health support and other health services, as well as providing food aid and drinking water or organising cash-based assistance. A separate important task is monitoring the needs arising from the war across the country, in which CSOs have also played a significant role. Both national and broader activities are in turn based on the results of the monitoring.<\/p>\n The major role of CSOs<\/p>\n At the same time, the field of humanitarian aid has its own specifics, requiring professionalism and expert action, where speed and flexibility also play an important role. Many crises have shown that CSOs as a sector are at an advantage here, as they are able to work most successfully based on these criteria. In Estonia today, crisis preparation is predominantly coordinated by the state and state institutions, and CSOs are mostly seen as volunteers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe strength of Estonian CSOs lies both in the dedication of volunteers and in the professional knowledge, long-term experience, and strong relationships of organisations with their communities. Precisely thanks to combining these strengths, many associations are able to reach people, notice needs for help, and offer solutions that are desperately needed in a crisis situation. These are capacities that cannot be created overnight when a crisis breaks out. Therefore, it is important that CSOs are treated as substantive partners from the very beginning in crisis preparation, having their own competence and responsibility. The network being created will help make this cooperation more systematic, but it is equally important that organizations have sufficient support and resources even in peacetime to maintain and develop their capacity,\u201d said Marcus Ehasoo, advocacy manager of the Network of Estonian Nonprofit Organisations.<\/p>\n The CSO humanitarian aid network includes several dozen Estonian organisations from various fields, from education to social protection, and its creation is supported by the Kodaniku\u00fchiskonna Sihtkapital. All CSOs willing to increase their capacity to provide assistance in the event of a major crisis are welcome to join the network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today, on Mondo\u2019s initiation, a network of civil society organisations (CSO) is being established with the aim of increasing organisations\u2019 readiness to provide better assistance in the event of a crisis in Estonia. The need to create such a network comes from the Ukrainian experience. During a full-scale war, Ukrainian CSOs are carrying out several […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":536,"featured_media":50581,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","wpai_meta_description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[929838,929839,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-estonia-en","category-humanitaarabi-en","category-uudised-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mondo.org.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mondo.org.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mondo.org.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mondo.org.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/536"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mondo.org.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50584"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mondo.org.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50590,"href":"https:\/\/mondo.org.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50584\/revisions\/50590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mondo.org.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mondo.org.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mondo.org.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mondo.org.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}