The overall objective is to improve civil protection preparedness to all kinds of disasters inside or outside the Member States/Participating States of the Mechanism by providing funding for institutional preparedness and individual capacity strengthening initiatives.

Priority 1: Institutional preparedness: Proposals focussing on the institutional preparedness priority of the call will be able to place their focus on activities aimed at advancing preparedness, both within and between organisations, sectors and borders, especially in the context of applying lessons learnt to existing structures and processes. Activities can aim to encourage or even institutionalise cooperation between different stakeholders including the general public, improve communication, information management and facilitate the transfer of knowledge or integrate new approaches and innovative research in the interest of increasing preparedness at an institutional level.

Priority 2: Individual capacity strengthening: This priority aims to increase preparedness through activities that develop skills, expand relevant knowledge, and improve capacity and performance of individual experts or functional groups. While the primary responsibility for this process lies within each organisation, this call intends to complement efforts within individual stakeholders, by funding initiatives that gather resources beyond those typically available to the individual organisation. Bringing together different stakeholders, sharing knowledge, and developing formats to effectively make knowledge and skills available to relevant audiences throughout the UCPM community is the central objective of Priority 2.

Proposals that can be funded:

Under Priority 1 (Institutional preparedness), the call will look to fund activities that strengthen the ability of institutions tasked with civil protection or disaster risk management to effectively prepare for future disasters. The activities can focus on any or all of the following aspects: identifying institutional preparedness gaps, developing strategies to overcome identified gaps, as well as investigating the efficiency of new or existing tools, methodologies and approaches.

Under Priority 2 (Capacity strengthening), the call is seeking to support civil protection and disaster risk management actors by funding activities that improve the individual capacity to react during disasters.

The focus of the activities should lie on expanding knowledge, skills and performance in order to strengthen capacity at an individual scale. Projects can focus on any or all of the following elements: gathering of knowledge and good practices from different disaster risk management stakeholders, integrating input from science and research institutions into knowledge sharing activities relevant for disaster risk management, elaboration of methodologies for skill and knowledge transfer as well as the development and implementation of specific activities. Activities may also focus on integrating lessons learnt from recent emergencies into capacity strengthening initiatives.