Skip to content

Associate Professor wins Erasmus+ funding for Life Skills 4 Life After Prison project

Please see some similar images from my portfolio:

Associate Professor Adeela Shafi has won €56,000 Erasmus+ funding for a partnership project Life Skills 4 Life After Prison: Sowing the Seeds of Social Inclusion for Young Offenders.

The Skills4Life project focuses on young offenders’ personal development. It makes provisions to ensure that they are provided with the opportunity for personal self-growth and self-development during their life course, to gain a sense of direction and prepare for release.

A total of eight prisons throughout Europe will test and pilot the Skills4Life methodology, while a total of 80 young people are expected to participate and benefit from the project’s activities.

The project covers a dual purpose:

  1. To frame a new context in which young people in conflict with the law may shed the “offending identities” and negotiate new, prosocial identities and pathways for their lives
  2. To provide them the tools to successfully re-enter communities and re-set their pathways

Skills 4 Life proposes the development of a holistic learning programme to develop emotional, psychological and social needs. It covers topics such as; budgeting, work skills, goal setting and interpersonal communications.

The project builds on existing projects led by Adeela: Active Games for Change (AG4C) and Re-engaging Young Offender with Education and Learning (RENYO). These works mean that the University of Gloucestershire is leading the way in international collaborative work in this area involving over 17 countries across the world, including Nigeria, South Africa, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Romania, Hungary, USA and the UAE.

Adeela is key to the project in terms of understanding the lived experiences of young people who come into conflict with the law in the partner countries of Norway, France, Greece and the UK.

Dr Adeela ahmed Shafi said:
“This project helps us to further understand the challenges of young people in prison with regards to transition into the community.  It then enables us to develop a programme which specifically hopes to address these challenges.

“It is fantastic to have this funding and enables us to have our input into this important project and offer our expertise in this area”.