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Monthly Newsletter
October 2020
News from the Network
Alliance meeting of the four Orders of St John

Originally planned in The Hague, the meeting of the Council of the Alliance of the Orders of St John finally took place online on 02nd October. The four protestant Orders - The Johanniter Order, The Most Venerable Order of St John and the Dutch and Swedish Orders – reported on their activities and discussed strategic issues of common interest. Our Chairman Johannes Bucher presented the work of Johanniter International in the past twelve months. Further developments of the cooperation with the Sovereign Military Order of Malta was also discussed.
COVID-19 support provided by JOIN members

In light of the increased infection rates of the COVID-19 pandemic, our members are expanding their supporting measures especially targeting people in need. Our members provide essential care and support internationally and take various measures to help all people in these difficult times. Read more about the support of JOIN members here

Christmas-Truckers prepare their actions for 2020

The Christmas-Truckers is an initiative of the German and Austrian Johanniter to make the Christmas holidays special for disadvantaged people in rural regions of Southeast Europe since 1993. At its heart are people in Austria and Germany, who pack aid parcels with urgently needed food, hygiene items and children's toys for disadvantaged people in Eastern Europe. Between Christmas and New Year's Eve, the parcels are brought to Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine by volunteer drivers, where they are mostly handed over personally by the truckers. For this years’ actions, the first load of cartons to be filled in November are already provided, and volunteers have met online to plan strategies for the individual destination countries.
News from the Members

England: St John Ambulance celebrates World Mental Health Day

On 10th October, St John Ambulance raised awareness on mental health during the pandemic. In the frame of the 18th World Mental Health Day, our English member contributed to global mental health education, awareness and advocacy against social stigma. This year has been difficult for many people, and it is even more important to continue to look out for ourselves and each other’s mental health every day. Our English member offered a webinar on mental health best practices. Watch their webinar called ‘Enabling and supporting line managers and leaders to champion mental health initiatives: now and in the post-COVID-19 working environment’ here.

Jerusalem: Consequences of the pandemic for patients

The pandemic has severely impacted patients who have been diagnosed with vision impairment. Nearly 18,000 patients have been unable to access the services they need since April. Besides, more than 1,200 sight-saving surgical procedures have been cancelled. The St John Eye Hospital Group is working together with the Fred Hollows Foundation and will be strengthening health systems to ensure better health management of pandemics. They plan to mobilise financial and human resources to provide more than 25,500 eye operations and treatments. Read more here.

Austria: Johanniter reopen their homeless shelter

On 28th October, Johanniter has reopened their homeless shelter in Vienna with an increased number of beds. Many people without accommodation belong to the COVID-19 risk group and suffer significantly during the pandemic crisis. As homeless people are more often in poor health, and without a place of retreat, they cannot adequately protect themselves from the virus. A total of 470 beds are available in the houses in two locations in Vienna. Read more (on German) here.
News from Europe

Launch of the INFORM Severity Index

On 22nd October, the INFORM Severity Index was launched in a virtual event. This open tool was created in a collaboration between the European Commission and UN OCHA as an improved way to objectively measure and compare the severity of humanitarian crises and disasters globally. It aims at facilitating the development of a shared understanding of crisis severity and ensure all those affected get appropriate help. The tool also factors in the changes in severity over time and gives quantitative information about the severity of risks. You can watch the recording of the event via Microsoft Teams by choosing ‘JOIN Event’ here.

IPEN Webinar on contact tracing apps privacy and data protection

On 21st October, JOIN participated in the IPEN (Internet Privacy Engineering Network) webinar on contact tracing apps organised by EDPS (European Data Protection Supervisor) in the frame of the cybersecurity month. The online event brought together privacy experts and engineers from public authorities, industry, academia and civil society to discuss relevant challenges and developments for the technological implementation of data protection and privacy. The pandemic and the public debate on the suitability of several technological measures have boosted the arguably first privacy engineering exercise at a global, public scale. During the webinar developers and regulators shared relevant insights and stories for possible lessons learned with a focus on data protection by design and by default practices. Find the agenda and soon the recording of the event here.

European Projects
iProcureSecurity Webinar

The upcoming webinar organised by the iProcureSecurity consortium will take place on 5th November and will discuss the COVID-19 crisis and how to improve the triage scenarios through flexible triage management. The speakers were invited by the JOIN Office. You can register here.

Register for the iProcureSecurity final event

Planned on Thursday afternoon 3rd December, the iProcureSecurity final event will bring together partner organisations of the consortium, Expert and Advisory Board, Emergency Medical Services (EMS) practitioners from across Europe, representatives of the R&D community, decision-makers and other relevant stakeholders in the EMS field. During the event, the consortium will present the major achievements of the project and discuss the conclusions of iProcureSecurity on the preparation for the upcoming European-wide Pre-Commercial Procurement action. All JOIN members are welcomed to register here.
Johanniter International

Rue Joseph II, 166,

1000 Brussels, Belgium

join.office@johanniter.org
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