Professor Boaz Ganor
Principal Investigator
Large-scale emergency situations, such pandemics or earthquakes, create conditions that are dangerous to the fabric of social order, but can also constitute important opportunities for strengthening social sociality and trust in democratic institutions. Indeed, during the COVID-19 pandemic different countries were assisted by volunteers to perform various tasks, from support of hospital operations through logistics, transportation of food and medicine to isolated people in need, through assistance to law enforcement agencies to enforce COVID-19 patients’ quarantine requirement. The activation of these volunteer operations was in many cases a favorable outcome of citizens who took the initiative, approached the authorities and offered their assistance. In other cases the authorities were assisted by social organizations to recruit volunteers on a more organized basis.
This project aims to learn from these valuable experiences and derive practical lessons for future scalable civic-engagement action. It examines the procedures for recruiting and activating volunteers in Israel, on the national, municipal or civil society levels during the recent COVID-19 crisis – with a case study on the city of Herzliya. This analysis is intended to distill efficient procedures for volunteer activation and to formulate a generic methodology applicable for the efficient activation and management of volunteers during-large scale emergency situations.
The results of the project will assist with the preparation for future crises, either medical (e.g. pandemic) or other (e.g. non-conventional terrorism). It will improve crisis management and contending with the after-effects of such crises, through an efficient use of volunteers to provide healthcare and other essential services to the public.