A Firefighter's Approach to a Future-proof Community | Peter Bloemers | TEDxVenlo

In the early days every citizen was a firefighter. Neighbors helped each other to extinguish fires. Many people do not know, but nowadays still 80% of firefighters is a volunteer. They are essential in fire prevention and fire safety. How to involve them into the community? Peter will tell you his idea worth spreading.


At this point the fire department is almost at a point-of-no-return considering their volunteer base, which is essential to the effectiveness of the department. The finding and connecting of volunteers to the fire department seems to be a difficult job and becomes increasingly worrisome. If things keep going as they are, the fire department might get trouble gearing up and moving out.

Binding volunteers to your organization isn't easy, but Peter Bloemers has found a solution to this problem. "The fire department is a public responsibility where everyone should be able to rely on. To assure the safety of the population, the department needs to evolve!"

Peter has been a volunteer at the fire department, in one way or another, from the age of 10. Today he's the commander of the department in Belfeld."My lesson? If you want to evolve, you also need to look at the past. That's where I found the explanation and solution for the fire department problem".

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx