Mayday Rescue Foundation

The Mayday Rescue Foundation is a not-for-profit foundation registered in the Netherlands specialised in training, equipping, and assisting volunteer emergency first responders in areas of conflict, instability, and natural disaster. Its mission is "saving lives, strengthening communities." It was established by James Le Mesurier, a former British Army officer, in 2014, and currently operates primarily in the Middle East through offices in Turkey and Jordan.[1][2] Mayday Rescue was initially headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.[3]

Activities

The Mayday Rescue website states that its purpose is to "partner with communities that are entering, enduring, or emerging from conflict or natural disasters by providing training and equipment, advocacy and outreach, and organisational capacity building for grassroots emergency response groups at the local, regional and national levels."[1]

Since its establishment, the Mayday Rescue Foundation's primary role has been as an implementing partner for international support to Syria Civil Defence (SCD, the "White Helmets"), for whom it has provided training, equipment and mentorship funded by countries including the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany; the other implementing partner delivering aid to SCD is Chemonics, which delivers a comparable amount of support to the White Helmets on behalf of USAID.[4][5]

Mayday Rescue reports that between 2014 and 2018 it received funding of $127 million, $19 million of which came from non-government sources.[6]

Mayday Rescue is a separate organisation from both SCD and The Syria Campaign, a UK-based human rights organisation which advocates for protection of civilians in the Syrian conflict.[7][8] The Syria Campaign maintains an independent fundraising website, www.whitehelmets.org, which raises money to support SCD.[9] However Mayday Rescue and SCD headquarters share the same building, on the same floor until about 2017, and share meetings. Donors say it is difficult to distinguish the headquarters operation of the two organisations.[6]

As of 2019, Mayday Rescue was assessing possibilities for Civil Defence-based stabilisation programmes in countries other than Syria, such as Iraq and Yemen.[10]

References
  1. "Home | Mayday Rescue". www.maydayrescue.org. Archived from the original on 2 February 2017. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  2. Bryan Schatz (10 December 2014). "The Most Dangerous Job in the World: Syria's Elite Rescue Force". Men's Journal. Archived from the original on 5 November 2016. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
  3. "Mayday Rescue". Mayday Rescue. Archived from the original on 5 October 2014.
  4. "Our Partners". Syria Civil Defence. 15 February 2016. Archived from the original on 2 February 2017. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  5. "Fearless Syrian Women Volunteer To Pick Up The Pieces After Bombings". International Business Times. 2016-02-04. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  6. Review of the monitoring systems of three projects in Syria: AJACS, White Helmets and NLA (PDF). Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB) (Report). Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. August 2018. p. 23-24,43. Retrieved 12 November 2019.
  7. "A Syrian first responder's last call to action". Devex. 2016-08-23. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  8. "Home - The Syria Campaign". thesyriacampaign.org. Archived from the original on 29 January 2017. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  9. Campaign, The Syria. "Meet the heroes saving Syria". www.whitehelmets.org. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  10. "Mayday Rescue". Devex. Retrieved 17 November 2019.
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