Slovenian firefighting organization has a 150 years old legacy. In the past only strong men were recruited for doing hard tasks of firefighting and extinguishing fire, however in the contrary nowadays integration of youth into firefighting organization is one of the mail goals of every volunteer firefighting society. By participating in the firefighting organization, the youth has an opportunity of spending quality free time, participating in the community and contributing to the future of voluntary firefighting organization.
In the theoretical part we overview the history of firemen youth and the organization of firefighting in Slovenia. We also thoroughly examined firemen youth’s activities – firefighter training exercises and competitions, training camps, theoretical training, international relations, as well as social and others activities. We presented the important role of a mentor and different ways of their equipping and training. We studied three areas of teaching firemen youth: orientation in nature, sport and examined their work with people. In the end we presented different ways of cooperation between volunteer firefighting society, mentors and kindergartens or primary schools.
117 mentors of firemen’s youth from 14 firefighting regions of Slovenia took part in the research, which is presented in empirical part of my master’s degree thesis. We carried out a survey in order to gather data. The goal of the research was to examine the diversity of programs for firemen youth’s, functions and duties of mentors as well as examine ways of training mentors and their cooperation with educational establishments. We focused on establishing correlation between firefighting profession and orientation in nature, sport, youth’s outdoor activities and working with people. We looked at the activities and tools used while teaching and examined how often and what problems do they encounter and what activities or tools are used while teaching and equipping.
We found out that most of the mentors are performing their work conscientiously and responsibly. Over 80 % of mentors are participating in trainings, among which the meetings, workshops and conferences are mostly visited. Results showed that mentors are preparing quality programs for fireman youth with diverse activities. They are collaborating with kindergartens and primary schools in the month of October also known as a month of fire safety, in rehearsed evacuations and with presentations provided by firefighting organization. Mentors gained diverse knowledge as a result of schools, others mentors, literature or based on their own practice. They are transferring their knowledge to the youth through various activities while facing similar problems.
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