DENMARK

The role of civil society organisations in fostering psychological resilience

Images: Tindra Ekholm/Unsplash (left), Seppo Samuli/norden.org (right)

Image: Tindra Ekholm/Unsplash

The Danish case examines how psychological resilience is emerging through civil society organisations in a country characterised by a strong welfare system and the absence of comprehensive resilience strategies on the national level. Since the Cold War, the structure of Danish preparedness has been divided into silos, decentralising the responsibilities among authorities. While the country has a dedicated Danish Resilience Agency (Styrelsen for Samfundssikkerhed, or SAMSIK) under the Ministry of Resilience and Preparedness to address resilience-related issues, it does not currently possess national and structured resilience strategies focusing on psychological resilience, such as those visible in Finland. Despite this, Denmark’s strong welfare system, characterised by high levels of trust in society and the state apparatus, allows civil society to potentially replicate the resilience concept locally (OECD, 2024; Ortiz-Ospina et al., 2024).

Danish civil society actors and volunteer organisations have, it seems, stepped in to address the gap and engage local communities through various measures while seeking to strengthen their resilience. Although these initiatives are not explicitly framed in Denmark as psychological resilience, by description they bear some resemblance to the approaches outlined in the Finnish national security strategy. In this regard, social cohesion (social sammenhængskraft) in the Danish context—where strong welfare institutions, social systems, and a shared national identity shape the functioning of society—may be the closest approximation to what is referred to as psychological resilience in Finland. However, the term does not fully capture the resilience dimension and, therefore, cannot be used interchangeably (Jensen et al., 2019).

The interviews conducted as part of this case study revealed that the Danish government has begun considering ways of building the psychological and overarching resilience of its citizens. However, interviewees noted that Denmark is behind other Nordic countries by five to ten years in terms of resilience strategies, largely due to formerly differing perceptions on security. A first indication of nationally initiated psychological resilience practices is the creation of the Council of Cultural Resilience (Rådet for Kulturel Modstandskraft). Though not yet in operation, the aim of the council is to strengthen cultural resilience in the wake of higher security threats to Danish society (Kulturministeriet, 2026). New discussions on the concept of total preparedness in Denmark and a recent political agreement on preparedness have indicated greater focus on citizens’ resilience, especially through education, communication, and mutual support during crises (Danmarks Radio, 2026; Ministeriet for Samfundssikkerhed og Beredskab, 2025). These changes were argued in light of the changing security environment in Europe, most notably increased Russian aggression towards the continent, as highlighted in the most recent Danish security strategy (Udenrigsministeriet, 2023).

Civil society and volunteer approaches to psychological resilience

There are several organisations in Denmark that support civilians in preparing for crises. Most notable examples include the Red Cross and the Preparedness Association (Beredskabsforbundet). Although both organisations engage in a range of activities beyond psychological resilience, they nevertheless represent different components of the Finnish psychological resilience concept. The Red Cross seeks to address recovery, promote voluntary activities, combat social exclusion, and clearly communicate to vulnerable groups, while the Preparedness Association works with practically engaging local communities by building their own resilience.

The Red Cross works with the concept of psychosocial preparedness and recovery (psykosociale sundhedsberedskab), which includes psychological support but is more related to crisis events where social support is provided to local communities by non-psychologists (e.g., through food provision, housing, and other necessities). Beyond recovery, the Red Cross aims to ensure disadvantaged residents (who may be more disproportionately affected by global threats) develop capabilities to mentally prepare for potential crises by managing their worries. The organisation seeks to mobilise citizens to become volunteers, strengthening their mental willingness to help others in need. Currently, there are around 170 crisis support volunteers working with psychosocial preparedness who are engaged in various activities. But the organisation has around 30,000 registered volunteers that can be activated when needed, and an additional 10,000 volunteers on active standby.

The Red Cross aims to continuously engage volunteers, addressing frustrations seen in other organisations where trained volunteers become marginally involved. Ensuring that volunteers are continuously called upon to assist fellow citizens (even for minor check-ups) is one of the organisation’s goals. By doing so, the Red Cross ensures that nobody is left alone in a crisis. The organisation enables individuals to take initiative while also supporting municipalities, who have the legal mandate to address such issues. These initiatives are based on the new national risk assessment (Nationalt Risikobillede) and recently announced plan for total preparedness in Denmark, which requires a “society as a whole” mindset, rather than an authority-based approach within resilience (Styrelsen for Samfundssikkerhed, 2025-a). The Red Cross has also developed teaching materials, which are used for early education in schools.

The Preparedness Association is another civil society organisation whose operations rely heavily on voluntary participation. While the organisation has several branches (e.g., voluntary firefighters), it also conducts a range of courses aimed at strengthening psychological resilience among individuals and communities (though these initiatives are not explicitly framed in such terms). They currently have around 100 volunteer educators who carry out free courses for individuals on crisis readiness and environmental and fire dangers. The most popular weekend-long course is called Crisis ready—Take care of yourself for 3 days (Kriseparat - klar dig selv i 3 døgn) which teaches people to first take care of themselves, then their family, and finally, their neighbours. Seminars for people with disabilities are organised based on a train-the-trainer model, where municipal workers who take care of disabled individuals become key figures and carry over relevant information to patients on how to become more resilient. These courses are used for calming fears, letting reason prevail, and enabling self-sufficiency (without a caregiver) for three days.

Since February 2026, the Preparedness Association has launched free crisis-readiness workshops for communities called Community, Neighbourhood, Preparedness (Fællesskab, Naboskab, Beredskab). These workshops are based on the Danish Resilience Agency’s guidelines for resilient communities, which focus on developing local preparedness plans (Styrelsen for Samfundssikkerhed, 2025-b). The workshops encourage building local communities and gathering preparedness groups consisting of 5-8 community representatives who hold responsibility for preparing these plans. The courses gamify the aforementioned guidelines for communities and teach the selected representatives how to mentally and physically help other community members prepare for unexpected events. At time of writing, approximately 20 communities have participated in these workshops.

Beyond developing preparedness plans, the aim of the workshops is to foster a community mindset that supports vulnerable neighbours or community members during crises. As one expert noted, flexibility is essential, as it is impossible to predict who will need help the most. Members of developed social circles—such as football, knitting, and cooking clubs—are more inclined to help each other in crises due to a shared community feeling. However, whether a social circle (or community) can extend beyond its boundaries to support non-members remains unclear, underscoring the importance of belonging to a community.

Box 4 describes how the workshop is conducted, including three distinct stages and various roles of a resilient community. To further upskill key roles, community point persons, and crisis coordinators, the Preparedness Association is developing an e-learning course. When a community orders a workshop, the association also provides the members with various materials, such as an example of a detailed community preparedness plan, advice booklets, toolboxes, and templates which can be filled out for easier plan development.

Box 4. Workshop game: Community, Neighbourhood, Preparedness

Game material:

Gameboard
22 action cards
10 consequence cards
10 role cards

Game setting:

The local community experienced a long-term electricity outage.

Game sequence:

Each card has an explanation on the back side. The workshop consists of four stages:

During the first stage, participants discuss and select three cards representing the most critical consequences of long-term electricity outage.
During the second stage, participants discuss and select which actions would best address the selected consequences.
During the third stage, participants discuss and select which roles are the most important to delegate in a community to carry out the actions (e.g. point person, crisis coordinator, communicator, first aider, etc.).
The game is then repeated with different consequences, actions, and roles.

These two examples of volunteer civil society organisations and their activities illustrate some initiatives that support the development of psychological resilience in Denmark. The organisations are highly place-based with offices dispersed in every region of the country. Being well-established locally, they are easily accessible to locals and act effectively when needs arise. Other examples of such organisations in the Danish context may include People and Security (Folk og Sikkerhed), Save the Children (Red Barnet), the Senior Citizens' Association (Ældre Sagen), and Children’s Welfare (Børns Vilkår).

Successes in developing resilience

Trust is a key element for a well-functioning and prosperous state. In Denmark, societal trust is generally high, which can have both positive and negative impacts in terms of psychological resilience. A central strength of organisations such as the Red Cross and the Preparedness Association is their reliance on local volunteer participation and their approachability, which can result in high levels of trust among communities. For instance, the Red Cross heavily focuses on external communication, which seeks to be simple and understandable for their target groups. When peers and civil society groups convey messages, people can better relate and become more receptive to the information, as it is shared on equal footing rather than imposed from above. In contrast, interviewees stated that people oftentimes feel alienated when the national system instructs them how to behave, and such demands are perceived too literally or become ignored. One interviewee provided an illustrative example:

They [the government] have sent out brochures about surviving on your own for three days. It’s essentially just a piece of paper with things to have at home … and I actually met one [resident] who said, “why do I need to buy canned tuna if I don’t like fish?” And I responded that it actually says, “for example, tuna.” People are used to listening to the system literally, but when we [civil society] have discussions with them, they understand that you can have spaghetti bolognese instead of tuna as long as it lasts for a long time.

A combination of national guidelines with engagement from more approachable organisations can potentially have a more effective outcome for the local communities. Since resilience topics can be perceived as frightening, civil society can succeed in demystifying the discussions on preparedness, presenting them as serious yet manageable.

Additionally, volunteer organisations enable highly motivated individuals to engage local communities at minimal cost. They often undergo training and can develop skills at a semi-professional or professional level. In Denmark, where there is limited national coordination of resilience efforts, volunteers are prepared to be integrated into a broader resilience system once such is in place. By being frontrunners of tasks related to resilience, civil society can leverage their inherent flexibility to effectively address challenges and react quickly to crises, avoiding bureaucratic procedures. The Red Cross already has some cooperation agreements with municipalities, but the long-term expectation is to be formally included in local preparedness and total defence structures.

Measuring the success of resilience work helps identify areas where further action is needed. While setting indicators for such ideas around trust and preparedness is challenging, the University College Copenhagen received funding for a research project which will conduct evaluations of, among other things, the educational work that the Preparedness Association has been carrying out. The Red Cross does not measure resilience as such but runs a range of initiatives and systematically evaluates them to improve its knowledge and preparedness for future events. In terms of teaching materials for schools, the organisation has collected data about how the materials were used to assess the usability of the teaching notes. The Red Cross also conducts surveys of economically vulnerable people’s ability to develop their own resilience and measures their levels of worry to evaluate how the organisation can help them develop further.

Challenges in developing resilience

Despite the success of civil society organisations with strengthening local communities’ psychological resilience, some challenges persist. These range from national policy absence to the general cultural environment, as characterised by the welfare state.

One of the main challenges identified in relation to resilience in Denmark is the absence of a national strategy or framework to engage and integrate relevant organisations and authorities. Some interviewees noted that organisations lack clear guidelines and a better understanding of the type of support expected from them at the national level. A more structured system and improved dialogue between civil society organisations and public authorities could help overcome existing coordination barriers. Municipalities, having a formal mandate for the issue, are likewise in need of more guidance from national leadership, especially smaller municipalities which may not possess the capacity to effectively work with resilience-related matters. As noted above, the Ministry of Resilience and Preparedness as well as SAMSIK are rather new authorities after restructuring, showing the novelty of these themes in Denmark.

A recent survey by TrygFonden found that Danes feel increasingly unsafe: perceptions of safety have reached their lowest recorded level, while household preparedness has increased marginally (Hovgaard, 2026). On the other hand, interviewees noted that some Danes do not perceive preparedness and security issues as urgent and that these issues are often not taken seriously by the general population. Whether or not this will change as national authorities engage more actively with resilience concepts remains unclear, but the country currently lacks structured strategies with clear guidelines for communities and individuals as well as a broader societal recognition of emerging threats, which affects its resilience.

As one interviewee highlighted: “I think that if you have never experienced it [crisis], or if it is happening elsewhere, it is difficult to relate to it. People tend to assume that we will deal with it once something happens.” While people tend to consider threats only when they affect them personally, high levels of trust in public authorities and the belief that national authorities hold responsibility for addressing crises may also reduce individuals’ sense of personal responsibility to become (psychologically) resilient. This may lead to misconceptions that responsible services will be available to assist during crises when, in reality, some degree of self-preparedness may be required. Trust is thus not a unidimensional concept as it can also potentially reduce levels of personal preparedness. Civil society organisations, such as the Preparedness Association, thus play an important role in knowledge-sharing and capacity-building among citizens, helping to counteract such misconceptions.

The Preparedness Association noted that, despite making preparedness workshops with around 25,000 people, they still must cancel at times due to insufficient registrations or cancellations. Furthermore, people often avoid thinking about crises because it is an uncomfortable topic and can become psychologically burdensome. At the same time, being resilient involves actively thinking about crises, which creates a self-reinforcing challenge.

Future opportunities for resilience

Active discussions on total preparedness concepts show that the theme of resilience has gained a foothold in Denmark. However, Denmark is in relatively early stages of creating an environment that structurally addresses psychological resilience. In lieu of formal resilience initiatives, various NGOs and civil society organisations are currently the driving force of local preparedness. To some degree, such structure is beneficial for early psychological resilience development, as it cannot be projected onto the population from national authorities without a strong foundational basis among local actors and the general population. However, interviewees agree that the national authorities have an important role to play, especially in managing citizens’ worries and feelings of safety, achieved through public discourse.

Due to minimal coordination and limited cross-organisational structure, the work conducted in this field remains scattered. Only when organisations such as the Red Cross enter into agreements with municipalities is their cooperation formalised. As one interviewee noted, civil society organisations are actively seeking formal inclusion in the total preparedness framework. A formalised structure would also allow for more effective synergy-building between various forms of civil society to cooperate around resilience. Better guidance would allow such organisations to understand what is expected of them, as well as how they can better align their activities on a national level and among civil society organisations. Despite organisations like the Red Cross expecting a more formal mandate within national security architecture, it remains unclear how much a voluntary organisation can formally commit to the cause while retaining independence. When developing future strategies, it is crucial that national authorities account for differing levels of capacities and capabilities of civil society organisations.