Volunteering is generally considered an unpaid, conscious activity which is undertaken of a person’s own free will and for the benefit of other people or society. Volunteering on the field of fire protection is a specific and extremely valuable that volunteer firefighters are not only willing to help others selflessly. They are willing to risk at any time to save others their lives, health. This article points out the importance and activity of the voluntary fire protection in Slovakia. It deals with the statistics on the development of volunteer fire department in Slovakia as well as the statistics on fire alarms. The study also includes results of the public opinion poll and its evaluation, from which we can say that the public response to the work of volunteer fire department is positive.
Our paper aims at analysing and assessing sustainable housing policy and social security in selected countries of the European Union with a special focus on housing policy which largerly depends on the family support and family policy of the EU Member States. Family policy and family support allow young families to acquire their own housing and therefore represent a key element in the bundle of the social-oriented state policies.
The paper describes the historical development of housing policy and security as well as provides comprehensive analyses of the existing housing policy instruments. Moreover, it focuses on the standard of living and various legal aspects of the social policy in the post-Communist countries using the case study of the Czech Republic. The analysis is done through the comparison of the state-of-the-art in the Czech Republic to the wealthier and more developed EU Member States represented by Germany and United Kingdom. We find that in all countries in question housing is of good quality but each country stands out with its own specifics that are dependent on the economic and social situation. Moreover, we find that the EU membership plays an important role in the formation and development of social policy and housing policy.