Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe e.V. (St. John Accident Assistance; JUH) is a registered association operating nationwide with its headquarters in Berlin and has been active in a wide range of social and charitable endeavours since 1952. It follows in the tradition of the Protestant Order of St. John, whose most important concern for centuries has been the help from human to human. With a current total of 29,000 full-time employees, more than 46,000 volunteers and 1.2 million supporting members, the JUH is one of the largest aid organisations in Europe and a major company in the social economy sector. Johanniter is involved in the areas of rescue and ambulance services, disaster management, care and nursing of the elderly, sick and refugees, driving services for people with limited mobility, education and training, work with children and young people, hospice work and other assistance in the charitable sector, as well as in humanitarian aid abroad, such as in cases of famine and natural disasters.
Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe e.V. regularly participates in third-party funded individual or joint research projects in all subject areas of its service portfolio. Individual research projects are carried out sporadically on a decentralized basis in the individual state and regional associations as well as the Johanniter Academies, but most are organized centrally in the two Research and Development (R&D) departments of the Lower Saxony/Bremen state office and the Competence Centre European Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (EUCC) in the Rhine-Main regional association. While the EUCC focuses on the Union Civil Protection Mechanism and pan-European projects, the R&D department addresses national and transnational research projects covering the entire spectrum of JUH activities. These include civil security research, disaster management and rescue services, elderly care, Ambient Assisted Living and eHealth, as well as community, youth, integration and education projects. The main funding sources are the EU as well as federal and state ministries, in particular the BMBF.
