The Minister of the Environment, Cristina Narbona, accompanied by the Director General of Penitentiary Institutions, Mercedes Gallizo, presented the “Oxygen Project” this morning at the Madrid IV Penitentiary Center in Navalcarnero. The project seeks to rescue the values of nature for the benefit of the person, with a view to his or her reintegration into society. Its main objective is the training of prison inmates, through courses related to the environment that have been designed to facilitate their subsequent incorporation into the labour market.

The “Oxygen Project” is promoted by the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of the Interior, the former through the Biodiversity Foundation and the Autonomous National Parks Agency, and the latter, through the Autonomous Prison Work and Training for Employment Agency and the Navalcarnero Penitentiary Centre. In addition, it has the participation of three social organizations with extensive experience in this area, Open Horizons, Solidarity for Development and the Tomillo Foundation.

The first initiative that has been launched within the framework of this project is currently being developed in the Madrid IV Penitentiary Center in Navalcarnero. The institutions promoting this initiative intend that the “Oxygen Project” will soon be extended to all prisons in our country, offering many of the inmates the opportunity to train in environmental matters as well as an adequate job future.

Thus, eighteen inmates of the Madrid IV Penitentiary Center in Navalcarnero participate in the two modules of the course that has just begun: gardening and forestry worker. The gardening module runs from October 2006 to May 2007, while the forestry worker module runs from May to September 2007. At the end of each of the modules, students will receive the corresponding degree.