In case of a major oil spill, many countries will have to rely on volunteers, or, at, least, to cope with a significant flood of citizens willing to help. While some States will use these volunteers only for logistical tasks such as preparing and serving meals or secretarial tasks, others will orientate them towards NGOs in charge of wildlife rehabilitation, and others involve them directly in shoreline cleanup operations. Hence the necessity to train potential volunteers in advance, register them in a database, and create a network that can be activated in case of an accident. The project for Preparedness for Oil-polluted Shoreline cleanup and Oiled Wildlife interventions (POSOW) was a two year project co-financed by the European Commission to improve preparedness and response in marine pollution in Mediterranean regions. The project aimed at establishing a regional cooperation synergy through the enhancement of knowledge and capacities of operators, professionals and volunteers in the field of marine pollution, in European Mediterranean coastal countries, namely Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Slovenia and Spain. It was implemented by REMPEC (The Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Centre for the Mediterranean Sea) as coordinator, and its partners:- Cedre (Centre of Documentation, Research and Experimentation on Accidental Water Pollution)- ISPRA (Italy's Institute for Environmental Protection and Research)- Sea Alarm Foundation-The CPMR (Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions)A training package including a manual, several posters, Power-Point presentations and an instructor manual was produced on each of the following topics:-Oil spill volunteer management-Oiled shoreline assessment (SCAT)- Oiled shoreline cleanup-Oiled wildlife response. Once the training package ready, around 35 trainees (local authorities, civil protection and NGOs) from the regions involved attended train-the-trainer courses at Cedre, including 2 days of theoretical training on the 4 topics, delivered by the partners of the project, a pedagogical session and exercises (SCAT and cleanup) with real oil. These trainees will in turn become trainers in their regions, and organize national pilot training courses in autumn 2013, under supervision of the project partners, and hopefully other training sessions afterwards, with the aim of training as many people as possible. All volunteers thus trained will be invited to register into an international database. A video and a brochure presenting the project were also produced, and a dedicated website set up, from which the training documents can be downloaded: www.posow.org.