Volunteers and humanitarian fault

"Civil Corps" Alena Popova

With the onset of summer in Russia, a new humanitarian agency begins to operate, which its founders called the "civilian corps". Its task is to combine the efforts of volunteers who help the population in case of emergency situations. "Civil Corps" has already been registered with the Ministry of Justice. The entrepreneur in the field of Internet technologies found this social structure Alena Popova, who was remembered by many as the organizer of volunteer assistance to residents of the flooded Crimea.


But will it not turn out that the state, which is so slow, seeing that the "civil corps" so successfully carries out its activities, will completely stop helping the victims? Alena Popova considers such fears groundless.

"Civil Corps" Alena Popova

- We are not going to replace ourselves with any type of state activity. We are not rescuers, and therefore we should not attend the place of event during the first phase of the rescue operation, that is, not climb into the fire, we will not disassemble the rubble - this is done by the Ministry of Emergencies. We also do not present at the third, humanitarian stage of operation, when social services begin to engage in a person. The fact is that there is a serious problem that is faced with all countries of the world. This is the so -called humanitarian fault, the humanitarian gap, in different states it is from two hours to three months. In our conditions, it often looks like this: a person has already been pulled out of a fire, for example, he was pulled out, he stands in slippers and underpants on the street in winter and he must come to the social service to write a statement to receive monetary assistance. At the same time, the victim should have a fire certificate, and even a passport, which, obviously, also burned down. And we should be at this stage. The first three days are important here. It was in the first three days that the person left without sufficient help, who was saved from any emergency, the thought arises "it would be better if I did not survive." He lost everything, he was settled in a hotel or in the assembly hall of the school and him, who did not recover from the shock, forced to collect a bunch of papers. Is it too surprised that he has conflicts with social services, he hates everything that happens, and this bureaucratic machine does not move anywhere. All over the world, the Red Cross, the UN volunteers, the mass of humanitarian organizations help here, because they work more efficiently, more harmoniously and clearly than government agencies. But these organizations never do the work of the state, and we are not going to. Personally, I, as an entrepreneur, pay taxes, and I want the Ministry of Emergencies and social services to work out in full.
The "Civil Corps" was established in not the best for independent non -profit organizations. Now too many socially oriented NPOs are persecuted. Alena Popova and her like -minded people could not think about it.

-Of course, we assume that if something does not like the authorities, then we will get into this radar of constant checks. Both I, and the other two co -founders, are absolutely ready for calls to the prosecutor's office. We initially build a system of absolute transparency with external auditors. The whole accounting will be transparent. We are set to the construct, but if we insert sticks into the wheels, then we will work in an unregistered mode, we also decided.

We have a bright mission, we are a humanitarian agency, we are going to help people, and, frankly, we absolutely do not care. We have frightened people who will not help people, explaining that they will be called for interrogation to the prosecutor's office.

Our guys went through a lot. With one of the co -founders Vsevolod
Makhov, we were engaged in Crimean, and Derbent, and fires in Siberia. Of us, Seva has the greatest experience in participating in humanitarian operations. He worked in international missions, he worked in the Red Cross, he was a military physician, he took place in hot spots with "doctors without borders" all humanitarian operations. And our task is just to create an international level structure. So that we quickly, literally for half an hour, deployed the information headquarters so that we can instantly collect data and filter, which from these data must be taken to the public, which is not; So that we form a sheet of tasks to receive humanitarian assistance promptly and can quickly pack it.

We discussed for a very long time with everyone, we need or do not need official design. We decided what was needed, because it would be necessary to sign contracts about cooperation with retail chains. Because, if a global emergency occurs, we do not need to hold a warehouse in the federal center, and the closest warehouse is in the department store of the trading network. And of course, it is easier for us, having instructions on how to quickly pack these products, come to their warehouse and take fresh products.
In addition, without registration, we could not officially open an account and officially could not contact the business that, please, participate in humanitarian operations of such and such an order.
Only for this we needed registration. In order for us to organize ourselves, we do not need it at all, that is, we lived normally without it and, I would say, even worked effectively.

- Did I understand correctly that your "civil corps" now consists of those informal volunteer structures that have already arisen some time ago and already have experience?

- In our seven regions, headquarters are formed according to two principles. The first is free volunteers. For the most part, those with whom we worked in Krymsk. They went through the emergency and know how to behave. The second story is when volunteer associations come to us, registered or not, and they say: let's cooperate. Since we have no goal of becoming volunteers of all Rus', we have a narrow -profile, clear, concrete task, we are quite ready to act together with such organizations. Be that as it may, I now see that our volunteer base is growing very much. This is good, but this is not enough, because actions, albeit a large number of people, should be effective. Therefore, the technical equipment of the “civil corps” departments is being formed now, it is clear that we will not be able to go to the fire if there is no vehicle, and we need a centralized vehicle that will be equipped with humanitarian packages. There are three types of packages: male, female, children's, 13 pieces. We also calculated that it is in the humanitarian bag and who is pacing it, how it is delivered, what data we collect. How do we understand that a person is really affected, how do we cooperate with the Ministry of Emergencies? For this, a number of technical things are needed: phones, cars, fuel, bags and so on. The main thing is that we do not ask the state from the state.

According to Alena Popova, the "civilian corps" intends to help the victims of the disasters of any scale, whether it is a fire in a separate village house or an emergency that arose in the whole region.