CERIDES is happy to announce that the hybrid kick-off meeting of the DG-ECHO project HOPE took place on Monday the 31st of January 2022, in Brussels, Belgium. CERIDES acts as the coordinating organisation of the project. Mr. Evangelos Katsaros, CERIDES Research Associate, and Manager of the project, physically attended the meetings and presented the planned activities to the DG-ECHO Officers. Representatives from all consortium partners attended the meeting in virtual mode.
HOPE is a Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM) Full Scale Exercise, which is funded under the call UCPM-EXT-AG. The aim of the HOPE FSX project is to improve civil protection preparedness and response capabilities of Armenia in dealing with large disasters that require joint response coordination facilitated via the Union Civil Protection Mechanism. South Caucasus efforts for sustainable development are clearly threatened by a huge earthquake. Thus, sharing capacities and resources, scientific support decision making, use of proven innovative tools, and joint training will lead to improvement of cross border cooperation procedures of the Mechanism.
The total budget of the project is in the region of 1M Euros. The total duration is 24 months. The project consortium consists of the following members:
European University Cyprus (Cyprus) (Project Coordinator)
Ministry of Emergency Situations (Armenia)
Ministry of Interior / Cyprus Civil Defense (Cyprus)
Protection and Rescue Directorate (North Macedonia)
Ministry of Interior (Montenegro)
Bureau De Recherches Geologiques Et Minieres (France)
Ministry of Interior (France)
General Secretariat Civil Protection (Greece)
The project will also be supported by the Emergency management Service (EMS) of Georgia, and by the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group (INSARAG).