On December 12th we meet at the Cascais Ambiente headquarters. A day full of intensive work begins: After reflecting on yesterday and discussing organizational matters, we exchange the results of the „Local Roundtables“. We organized these after the International Roundtable in Witzenhausen last April did not reach the desired number of participants, obviously due to language barriers. In the national roundtables, we were able to gain further information and aspects for the development of the curriculum.
Chiara Borsini from the project partner EGINA contributed important advice for the development of the MOOC from her experience in other European projects, and the participants discussed who would be responsible for which content areas of the course.
The first test runs are scheduled to begin in May. Graduates have four months to complete the course and are expected to devote around ten hours a week to it. The candidates are particularly suited to people who work in prison and are interested in agriculture, the ecological upgrading of existing agricultural or horticultural activities in the penal system, or setting up new agricultural activities in prisoners. It would of course be great if there were prospects for implementation after the course.
Five successful course graduates from each country will then be invited to take part in a practical implementation in Portugal. This is expected to take place in September. The two prisons visited offer many approaches for this, be it to jointly bring the garden in Leiria back into use and improve its ecological value or to further expand the garden project in Tires.
Anyone interested in the project can find out more on the website www.ecofarms4prisons.eu and contact us!
