The Association of Flemish Cities and Municipalities (VVSG) has been organizing ‘Sustainable Municipality Week' since 2018. Participating cities and municipalities will hoist an SDG flag at the city hall and celebrate their ‘sustainable heroes’. These heroes are local citizens, schools, businesses, and associations who contribute to one or more SDGs in their work or daily lives and therefore become the local faces of the 17 global goals.
In 2023, the campaign highlights local sustainable heroes who contribute to SDG 4. Participants celebrate schools, teachers but equally businesses, organisations and individual citizens who contribute to lifelong learning, equal opportunities and well-being in schools & childcare, global citizenship education & education around the SDGs, and the right to education for all.
A new campaign element was added this year: the SDG time capsule. Cities and municipalities collect wishes for a sustainable society in 2030 among their heroes, schools, and citizens. These are handed over to the local government during festive celebrations.
Several Flemish municipalities already involved their international town twinning partners - from Senegal, Bolivia, South Africa and Cameroon, among others - in the campaign. VVSG will provide additional support for this international component in the coming years, in order to also provide local governments outside Belgium with a campaign format to make the SDGs both better known and more tangible.
Participating municipalities, their heroes, photos and stories are collected on the campaign website www.duurzamegemeente.be (only available in Dutch).
Find more information about the campaign in this publication, or watch videos about the campaign on VVSG’s YouTube channel.