ENHW contributed very intensively in putting together Estonia’s Internal Security Development Plan 2015- 2020. Since we are the biggest and oldest volunteer organisation in this field, our experiences and knowledge was highly valued. We can straight admit that our co-operation with the state is in very good level, it’s not a project based support any more. Now we are facing a new challenge - policy development is taking a lot from our resources and we don’t want that our main activities will suffer through this work.
Who has more interest towards Estonian security policies, here is the English version.
Two national campaigns
Besides our everyday activities in promoting neighbourhood watch we also implemented 2 bigger campaigns. The main aim was to recognise active and energetic people who are contributing for the safety increase.
The first campaign is called “Good neighbour”, we have implemented this campaign already 6 years. We encourage Estonian people to send us information about their good neighbours, describe and explain why they think they have the best neighbours in the world. They can submit their information through a special web-page, or if they want they can send this information also with the post. We have formed a small group who will look through all the descriptions and with the scoring system the best neighbour is chosen. We have several awards in co-operation with different companies, this year the best neighbour could take his family to spend a weekend in a SPA in a small Estonian city, also the company Mercedes Benz gave their newest car for free use for this weekend. The campaign was supported also from real estate company, books stores etc. Usually we hand over the prices in our annual meeting where we also celebrate our organisations birthday, so this brings us also some media coverage.
Another regular campaign, which also took place in 2016. is called “Good official”. Through this campaign we want to recognise the public servants who work in the field of safety and who have contributed more then their actual work duties demand. Yes, there are lot of these kinds of officials J
So we ask people to nominate the officials and also to describe shortly why they think this official is the best, what activities make her/him worth for the title. We use similar web-page as in the “Good neighbour” campaign, we gather all the applications and small jury will choose the best official from the submitted candidates. As with “Good neighbour” campaign” it is always difficult to choose, the nominated persons all deserve a recognition.
For the “Good official” campaign we don’t have a special final event, in our opinion it is important to recognise the nominated persons in front of the colleagues, so in co-operation with him/her employer we will find the best way to do it. This year we had the best official from the Ministry of Interior and this recognition came to him as very pleasant surprise.
Actually these campaigns don’t demand so much resources but the outcome is very positive and useful. Through these campaigns also our organisation will get more attention. If somebody has bigger interest towards these campaigns we are gladly sharing more detailed information.
Tiina Ristmäe
