A six-year Erasmus Mundus joint master project known as ‘Flourish’, with the University of Malta as its lead partner, was recently approved with a budget of €4.6 million.

The project has developed a joint master programme that seeks to address the need to provide a meaningful, relevant and balanced education for children growing up in adverse and marginalised circumstances, by focusing on their strengths and building their assets within protective contexts. It will address a clear gap in the field, namely the training and education of educators and practitioners so as to be able to empower children and young people with the necessary competencies to deal effectively with the obstacles and challenges in their education and development.

It will train practitioners to empower children with the competencies to deal with challenges in their education and development

This need for practitioners’ education in resilience has been reported across cultures and regions of the world, and the Flourish project will address this need at both European and international levels by providing postgraduate, high-quality resilience education for educators and other practitioners, integrating theory and practice within a strength-based, systemic perspective to education and human development.

The project will be run by a consortium of four project partners and five associated partners. Carmel Cefai, director of the Centre of Resilience and Socio-Emotional Health and professor in Psychology at the University of Malta’s Faculty of Social Well-Being, is the principal investigator. The other project partners in the consortium – the University of Crete, the University of Lisbon and the University Stefan Cel Mare Suceava – together with five associated partners in Canada, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland and South Africa, are very well-placed to provide training to the participants.

The programme is the first international, joint master degree in resilience in educational contexts, led by a consortium of four degree-awarding partners and five associated partners. It is a two-year, full-time programme consisting of taught study-units, a practice placement, a dissertation, and a summer school, spread over four mobility moves. Four cohorts of students will be trained over a six-year period.

The project starts this month.

For further information, visit the website https://www.um.edu.mt/cres/.