
PusH - Precarious Housing in Europe, aims to collect and discuss evidence on this growing European-wide phenomenon and make it available for teaching and dissemination in our partner institutions and beyond. The lack of decent, affordable housing and the occurrence of informal, illegal, or unsafe housing across all member states poses a threat to social inclusion in the EU, and hinders the mobility of EU citizens and the integration of third-country nationals. However, so far the issue has not been systematically taken up in curricula in HEIs across Europe. PusH addresses this gap by uniting seven partners from both older and younger EU member states enthusiastically committed to higher education and research that actively engage with societal needs, promote the co-creation of knowledge across disciplines, and bridge the research-practice divide. The consortium comprises HEIs involved in undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate education (Durham, Utrecht, Venice and Leuphana), the Danube-Krems University as a provider of continuing education for working professionals, as well as two partners from Bulgaria and Hungary as those countries where informal and precarious housing is a long-standing phenomenon. The Centre for Economic and Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (CERS HAS) in Budapest and the Open Society Institute in Sofia as a non-governmental, non-for-profit organization, have an established reputation for providing scientific evidence and policy advice on precarious housing and will facilitate the exchange, flow, and co-creation of knowledge on precarious housing within the PusH consortium and beyond.In order to reach its goals PusH will result in four textbook chapters on cross-cutting issues around precarious housing that will be used for teaching within the partner institutions and will be published open access for both students and teachers beyond this project. Each chapter will be made available as a corresponding e-learning module to reach a wider audience of students, lecturers and multipliers. All chapters and modules are going to be presented at separate multiplier events, in order to discuss and engage with associated partners such as local authorities, policy-makers, CBOs and NGOs. Moreover, PusH is going to organise two summer schools for students and lecturers from within our institutions. Apart from learning about the reasons for, and challenges of, precarious housing more generally, the first summer school in Bulgaria is going to allow students and lecturers to get first-hand impressions of informal housing of the Roma community, while the second summer school in Italy will draw from our partner’s experience and networks in the field of refugee migration and integration, both encouraging students and lecturers to engage with local practitioners.The PusH Strategic Partnership will therefore bring together a wealth of international expertise on precarious housing, migration, and urban change in Europe, along with partner third sector organisations, to co-create accessible and engaging resources for students and practitioners across Europe and to promote widespread understanding of precarious housing as an urgent political issue of our time.
The overall objective of this project is to get more higher education institutions to implement entrepreneurship education and/or enhance the quality of entrepreneurship education in their initial teacher education for primary teachers.The main outcome of this strategic partnership is a toolbox for higher education institutions with initial primary teacher education. The toolbox will allow combining different items for study modules to be used in or adapted to different contexts. It will be flexible also in the way of delivery. The toolbox will be offered in different languages. It will be produced by researching existing national and European learning resources of all kinds, complementing them and providing new material derived from the partners´ local context and the process that lies within this strategic partnership itself. Experiences made during the project and pilot implementation of the toolbox will lead to a guidance report for future users. This and more intellectual outputs of this project are addressing initial primary teacher training. There are quite a few initiatives offering to teach primary school children the basics of entrepreneurship. Some even offer children the opportunity to learn first-hand how to start and operate their own business. In most European countries the focus for primary entrepreneurship education lies in the entrepreneurial mindsets though: encouraging character building, creativity, solution-oriented thinking, commercial/economic thinking and social skills. Thus, entrepreneurship education is one step ahead of the school curricula in most countries: To teach children to find resources to put their ideas into action. The project´s definition of entrepreneurship is this: “Entrepreneurship is when you act upon opportunities and ideas and transform them into value for others. The value that is created can be financial, cultural, or social”.The interested English speaking primary school teacher in service will find a surprisingly large number of websites offering material and courses. And even though many European countries have entrepreneurship education in their strategies and curricula also for primary schools, only three countries take it for granted that their future primary teachers have competences and skills for entrepreneurship education: Denmark, Estonia, Latvia. The University of Jyväskylä in Finland has implemented entrepreneurship education in several modules of teacher education on a compulsory basis.The EU Commission Report “Entrepreneurship Education: Enabling Teachers as a Critical Success Factor” (2011) states that the core skills linked to entrepreneurship education are seldom a priority in initial teacher education. We can therefore conclude that (compulsory) modules in initial primary teacher education in the EU are still very rare. There is no material for students in initial primary teacher education available.The international constellation of this strategic partnership and its involvement of schools and other external partners in the design of the project will allow closing this gap. The partnership brings the following competences together: experience in teaching entrepreneurship in ITE (University of Deusto, Spain, and University College Sjaelland, Denmark), research on EE and expertise in e-learning (Mid-Sweden University), entrepreneurship education as an interdisciplinary research approach (Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany), informal practical EE (Technichus, Sweden), broad insight in EE from different perspectives as a foundation (The Danish Foundation for Entrepreneurship, Denmark), creativity as part of EE in initial teacher education (Artesis Plantijn, Belgium) and reviewing EE with policy makers (Vilnius Kollegia, Lithuania). On top of each programme organisation´s expertise, each partner will involve 10 students three times throughout the project (three cohorts) and form a network of at least two schools (including pupils, parents, teachers, headmasters) and local businesses (private and/or public). The project follows the methodical approach of a pedagogical action research cycle: the student course will be repeated twice and accompanied by profound observation and evaluation and continuous improvement, finally leading to a sustainable product. All experiences gained will feed into the guidance report for teacher educators.The project focuses on initial primary teacher education, but, given the fact that in some programme countries, entrepreneurship education is still seldom connected to primary education (despite governmental strategies and curricula), an impact can also be expected for the local school communities. Plus, the teacher students being offered entrepreneurship education will become `entrepreneurial´ teachers, teachers who act as a coach to prepare the pupils and create an environment which boosts their courage and knowledge to turn ideas into actions.
TransPharm two-track approach focusses on the one hand on the compounds itself by identifying greener and more sustainable-by-design Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) and on the other hand reducing the environmental impact and resilience of the manufacturing process by optimizing the synthesis route of new APIs in continuous flow and by proposing greener alternative solvents. The aim of the project is to (i) analyse and predict flow behaviour and environmental biodegradability of APIs and their synthesis pathways; (ii) identify greener and more sustainable alternatives to pharmaceutical products / APIs of concern; (iii) reduce the footprint and create important shortcuts in synthetic schemes of APIs; and (iv) assess the sustainability of pharmaceuticals over their entire life cycle. To reach the envisaged aims, the project will deliver four toolboxes (consisting of digital tools and guidelines) for the development of greener pharmaceutical products and APIs. These toolboxes will be used to (v) assess the potential to move towards the transition to greener, more agile pharmaceutical production. In addition, TransPharm will elaborate on the business case for sustainable pharmaceutical products or APIs and what is needed to bring them to the market. The project will also make sure that (vi) key project results and knowledge are properly transferred towards targeted stakeholders. TransPharm?s outcome contribute to a Europe, that is self-sufficient by reducing dependence on API production in third countries; making the EU healthcare industry more competitive, sustainable and reliable, ensuring timely supply of essential medicines from particularly complex or critical supply and distribution chains and positioning EU as a leader in innovative technologies.