European Report on Prisoner Reintegration through Entrepreneurship and Psychology

It has been well documented that reintegration into the workforce is a key factor in reducing recidivism amongst people with a criminal record. However, mainstream employment poses a challenge for many individuals with criminal histories who experience discrimination from prospective employers. Entrepreneurship or self-employment offers an alternative pathway into the labour market but it is not widely promoted as a viable career option. In recent years, in-prison entrepreneurship education programmes (particularly in the USA) have grown in prominence to offer participants another option in terms of future labour market activation. Despite the recorded success of these initiatives, the adoption of such programmes within Europe is not widespread. The aim of this report is to provide evidence-based analysis and recommendations for the piloting of an e-learning entrepreneurship education programme developed under PREP (Prisoner Reintegration through Entrepreneurship and Psychology) which is an EU Erasmus+ funded project. The report covers the criminal justice systems across three national contexts – Ireland, Germany and Romania. The data for the findings and recommendations derive from a literature review of the key academic fields and country-level interviews conducted with justice-impacted individuals and key informants across the criminal justice systems.ERASMUS+ Strategic Partnership

DIGITAL EDUCATION : TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE

To achieve long-term sustainability individuals, groups, and organizations need to mitigate climate change and adapt to the new environmental scenarios. Indeed, climate change is a process that cannot be ignored in any way any longer. Not only it is happening everywhere, and the effects are more noticeable every year, but it has also been happening for decades with an impact on every ecosystem of the planet. This means that climate change is a fundamental issue that affects every person, group, and organization. Professionally, we need as much expertise as we can gather. More practitioners are needed with experience in every field to help mitigate climate change as much as possible while facilitating rapid adaptation to a progressively damaging climate change. Climate change is caused by humans and human behavior, even if some issues seem technological and environmental problems, the origin is still human behavior. Therefore, there is a critical need for being able to count on behavioral experts that contribute to explaining current behaviors. Additionally, behavior change experts who are able to motivate individuals, groups, and organizations to engage in mitigation and adaptation behaviors are equally necessary. To achieve this, a more comprehensive range of educational opportunities is needed. This education must be included in vocational training and applied science universities. However, nothing will have an impact as far-reaching as education about climate change for students during their bachelor and master programs. The capacity of highly trained professionals with behavioral change expertise can have a trickling-down effect that will benefit the whole world. Because of how crucial education in climate change is, an urgent need is currently a pressing matter to provide specialized education on how to understand and improve the sustainability behavior of people, groups, and organizations. This need to increase both the amount and quality of sustainability-related education is met with an insufficient amount of education resources being offered. Creating new courses or even programs on this topic is not a realistic possibility for many institutions. In some cases, the development of new content might not be feasible due to local difficulties, and in other cases, climate change might not be a preference whatsoever. Therefore, it is crucial to offer alternatives to institutions that due to factors such as lack of local expertise, different agendas, or the difficulties linked to generating new content cannot offer education on climate change and behavior themselves. This education alternative should be easy to implement and adapt to the specific programs. The most straightforward contribution to facilitating education in climate change at bachelor and master levels is offering online courses that can be imported. Additionally, to maximize the reach of these courses, they should include content that can be learned in a self-guided manner. The PSYCLIC project offers the latest content about climate change and human behavior. This material will be available to be directly imported digitally at any university program. Additionally, it has a modular structure that is self-guided by default. However, the education resource that the PSYCLIC project offers will not make a meaningful impact unless the target community (i.e., institutions that could offer education on the topic of climate change and behavior but do not do so) is eager to use the education resources that the project will offer. To understand if the profile of scholars that the PSYCLIC project has as the target are ready and kin on using what the project will offer, we reached other colleagues to explore the demands and barriers for ready to use digital education material on climate change and behavior.ERASMUS+ / Projektname: Psychology and Climate Change - Digital Education / Projekt Akronym: PSYCLI

PsyCLIC Report of Climate Activists Focus Groups

Projecte: Erasmus + & "PsyCLIC: Psychology and Climate Change"PSYCLIC is a joint initiative between the Saarland, Groningen, and Barcelona universities. The project’s aim is to generate educational content for psychology students through digital and innovative learning strategies to promote the understanding, evaluation, and effectiveness of the activism and social movements related to climate change.This joint effort to create quality content for students drove us to do a preliminary phase for studying the actual needs of activist groups, NGOs, and other organizations that work to preserve the environment. This action aims to connect the future theoretical content with the current needs of those involved. The consortium decided to hold focus groups with representatives of organizations, gather information about them, and establish contacts to support and have feedback at the same time.[cat] - Informe que recull els resultats de focus groups realitzats amb activistes climàtics als tres països que participen en el projecte (Alemanya, Països Baixos i Espanya