Action Learning Projects

There are 17 SDGs, set by the UN and adopted by almost all the world’s countries in 2015. The timeframe for achieving the goals is 2030. The ‘five Ps’ – people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership – capture the broad scope of the agenda. Governments are accountable for implementing the SDGs, but this cannot be achieved without participation from all sectors and groups in society, from citizens to business and from the media to civil society organizations, students and educational institutions.

By working together with students from different backgrounds and a business stakeholder, you will contribute to one of these SDG’s. By acquiring in-depth knowledge about the issues at stake, identifying opportunities, brainstorming about actions, and working together you and your team will create societal impact.

In February, all ALP Groups present their work during a festive “ALP Fair”, visited by sustainability experts, journalists, policy makers, AMS corporate partners and staff and of course their project business stakeholders, friends and family. Some groups actually make it to national press!

Apart from an evaluation by a jury of Sustainability experts (both business and academic experts), jury and public also celebrate several ALP’s as the best in their category.

The Most Inspiring Action Learning Projects of 2022-2023

💡 The most innovative project
🤝 The best stakeholder engagement
🎯 The biggest impact achieved
⭐️The most inspiring project

You can find a summary of each winning project below.

Mission: In this ALP project, our students designed a solution to make it easier for visually impaired people to recycle their waste.

How: Emile de Strycker, Julius Beel, Elena Prozorova, Coline Schrauwen and Melada Chatvisuta worked on a project to contribute to an improved waste separation and hence, recycling in Antwerp, by placing educational QR code stickers on public waste bins. When scanned, the QR code automatically tells the user what type of waste is involved, so that he or she knows whether its use is appropriate. Hereby, the solution especially addresses old and visually impaired people, who face difficulties differentiating between waste bins in public places.

An additional impact is that it helps them move more independently through society. The students collaborated with relevant stakeholder organisations but also talked with the target group about their needs and what would help them. In a short time, they managed to define a relevant problem, design and develop an easy but high-impact solution, and implemented this in highly-trafficked public spaces for which they worked with other stakeholders (e.g shopping center Grand Bazar in Antwerp and Wijnegem shopping center). They really considered and involved their target group in every step, from design to implementation 👌

SDG 10: Reducing inequality

Mission: The noble goal of this team is to educate a generation of skilled waste separators.

How: The project successfully fulfills SDG 12 by encouraging children to recycle and therefore trying to increase the amount of recycled materials at schools. To realize their goal, Sem, Megan, Alexander, Suriya, Keerthana and Thibaud developed a number of games to get primary school children educated and excited about recycling and worked with four schools to test the games. Through a playful presentation and fun activities with the children, they really communicated with them in a clear way and apprehensible.

Trash monsters, recycling bingo and a waste relay race were their creative and playful ideas. As children have a limited attention span and need diverse stimuli, they even created a song "Onze school is groen". A fun way of teaching them young and making the new generation well aware of their impact on the environment and to contribute to a better world. Their slogan summarizes it all: "Let's educate a generation of skilled waste separators"

SDG 12: Responsible consumption and production - reduce substantially the waste generation by 2030 through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse.

Mission: To tackle the sustainability issue regarding hunger in Antwerp, Laura Taveirne, Neda Pavlova, Tin Tran, Ulaş Tanlak and Alex Keyaerts set up a “solidarity meal” initiative. It’s a good example of grassroot stakeholder engagement approach to translate the typically Turkish/Ottoman Empire tradition of “paying it forward” meals where you donate a meal to a customer after you.

How: To kick start the project, the ALP group reached out to local communities (mainly Turkish) that already know this tradition of social meal/food sharing to launch the same concept within their local community in the center of Antwerp. As a result, up to 10 meals a day are being handed out by the shops! And although impact is still local, the project immediately attracted interest of other NGO’s who see the potential of this type of grassroots, decentralized community support. Because of that a possible second launch of the project in Brussels is now on the agenda!

SDG 2: Zero hunger

Mission: The ALP group that won the biggest impact award, focused on helping international students how to recycle in Antwerp.

How: At the moment, international students don't get the right info and are unaware of the sorting rules. Marie-Lien Van Cauteren, Bram Janssens, Filippo Magni, Supphatra Phisaisawat and Ousman Touray found a solution for this by creating informative flyers (distributed at the beginning of the academic year) and a clearly structured website ( www.stu-stainable.be): an all-in-one platform linking to recycling practices from different players in Belgium in less than 2 clicks!

A good awareness campaign resulted in agreements with 7 universities to educate students via this easy to use info folder and link to their platform. And if you think about how many international students come to Antwerp every year, this project is definitely the right winner of the biggest impact!

SDG 12: Responsible production and consumption

Parallel to all this action, students are also supported to reflect on their learning during this ALP-experience. Dedicated coaches help students throughout the year to reflect on their development, to give and receive feedback, to open their minds to other perspectives, etc.

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