Reinforcing Links Between School and Community: Examples from Federation Wallonia-Brussels

The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) have been identified to transform the world ‘to greener, more inclusive economies, and stronger, more resilient societies’. Schools are central actors who can contribute to their achievement. It is well admitted that physical education (PE) teachers can play a determining role especially for SDGs 3 (Health) and 4 (Education). They are identified as the cornerstones of the physical activity promotion in the educational context. In a growing number of countries, they are now requested to lead also the health education. On the other hand, their potential actions for other SDG seem less documented. In this presentation, we will focus on SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities). Our priority will be to identify concrete examples implemented in Federation Wallonia-Brussels. Among those, we will describe (1) the project proposed by a primary school of a green area and consisting in delivering a ‘cyclist’s certificate’ aiming to the acquisition of specific knowledge and competence as well as the discovery of the ‘treasures’ of the region; (2) the collaboration between the ‘Foundation against cancer’ and some schools in the organization of sport events involving the students and focusing their extracurricular life, and; (3) the implementation of intergenerational sessions during which non-institutionazed seniors weekly attended to physical activities with preescholers/primary school children. The collaboration of several actors of the community during a continuing professional development initiative for PE teachers will also be described. For some examples, scientific data will be available to reinforce the interest of the projects.