SDG's coaching for municipalities
About this good practice
The regional public administration of Wallonia (sustainability unit) received requests for advice and coaching on CSR for public and private actors. To implement this, the regional administration has worked with a pool of around 10 coaches and organized regular methodological exchanges between them. At academic level, the project was sponsored by the Louvain School of Management.
Between 2020 and 2023, annual calls were launched Winning organisations have each set up a sustainability team including representatives of their various departments. Each organisation could benefit for free from the guidance of a sustainability coach who would lead them through at least five participatory sessions:
1) Awareness-raising on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the role that the organisation can play in achieving them;
2) Assessment of the organisation's impact on sustainable development (in relation to the SDGs and their targets);
3) Consultation with stakeholders, leading to a materiality matrix;
4) SDG roadmap defining the ambition (quantified targets) and means (action plan);
5) Communication and implementation advice.
The most recent edition of the coaching service also takes into account new obligations such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.
In total, 130 public and private organisations have been coached. For those who have completed the exercise, the SDG roadmap is made publicly available.
Expert opinion
Resources needed
The support scheme represented a budget of 1,006,870 € (incl. VAT) to support 130 organisations and 9 departments of the regional administration of Wallonia. This represents an average cost 7,243 € per organisation. The coordination of the scheme by the regional administration is 1/2 FTE.
Evidence of success
Almost all the participating organisations have an SDG roadmap as an output of the coaching, which is their sustainability strategy. Some still have to finalise it and get the necessary approval for publication.
Beneficiaries were able to evaluate the programme based on several features of the programme:
- Learnings
- Improved structuring
- Involvement of stakeholders
- Roadmap
- Ambition
It is interesting to note that the most popular actions were related to SDG12 (436), SDG11 (369).
Potential for learning or transfer
The French speaking community of Belgium has recently also implemented this programme. We are not aware of other transfers.
The programme is not particularly difficult to transfer, but it needs the necessary funding to hire the coaches.
The main difficulty is to ensure that the SDG roadmaps are being implemented after the coaching. Ideally, this needs a follow-up by the programme coordinator, which can be time consuming.
Up to know, several actions have been taken to trigger the follow-up:
- Invite organisations to present their successes and difficulties at regular webinars designed for the programme community;
- Invite organisations at face-to-face peer exchanges for half a day in small groups (around three organisations of the same type), based upon group intelligence;
- Ask organisations annually to fill in an evaluation form on their progresses;
- Visit the organisations to make a balance of the progresses and encourage the update of the SDG roadmap.
Further information
Good practice owner
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