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SHE4AHA Newsletter #1
Dear subscribers,
Five years has passed since SHE became an NGO. In these 5 years SHE has worked hard together with its national and regional coordinators to make every school in Europe a health promoting school. Just to mention a few of the SHE activities:
- We have developed a brand-new website.
- We have developed European standards and indicators for health promoting schools.
- We have revised to SHE School Manual to help schools become health promoting schools.
- We have developed factsheets and teachers’ material on various health subjects.
- We have translated our material into regional languages to strengthen the use.
You can read more about SHE on the SHE website. Here, you can also find all sorts of documents and tools to support your work with school health promotion: https://www.schoolsforhealth.org/
A new section has been created on the SHE website for European projects, which are of direct interest to SHE coordinators, as they have developed material that can be used to facilitate develop of and implementation of innovation in schools, such as the Health Promoting School Approach.
For the moment you can find information about two European projects, where several SHE partners have participated. More will come later. Please visit the section at https://www.schoolsforhealth.org/projects
The two projects that you can find in the project section are the SPISEY project (Supporting Practices for Inclusive Schooling and Education of the Youth) and the FUTE project (Future Teaching).
The aim of SPISEY is to support school managers in their strategic work to create inclusion in schools and other educational institutions, as well as an inclusive education. The project as developed a so-called European Inclusion compass, which is a strategic dialogue and decision tool to define common values and activities that can be implemented to support the development of an inclusive school.
The aim of FUTE is to support challenge oriented and participative learning and co-creation in schools. The project has developed a co-creation model and set of method cards, that build on design thinking and that can be used by teachers to co-create activities together with pupils, colleagues and parents. These method cards can with benefit be used to create and implement health promoting activities and learning.
In 2022, SHE managed to be part of 4 EU projects:
- Schools4Health is led by EuroHealthNet. The project strives to introduce, strengthen, and sustain the adoption of a participatory whole-school approach to health and wellbeing.
- PLACES is led by the Danish Design school. The overall goal of PLACES is to support the
implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG´s) in a European context sing playful learning storytelling and the HPS approach as methods. - Kissing Tartu is led by Tartu Youth Centre in Estonia. The objective of the project is to create new ways to integrate non-formal and formal learning opportunities in the field of sexual and health education.
- SHE4AHA is led by SHE. This newsletter is dedicated to this project in order to inform and inspire you.
The European Context of SHE4AHA (SHE 4 Active and Healthy Ageing)
In January 2021, the European Commission launched a green paper on ageing, called “Fostering solidarity and
responsibility between generations”. The purpose of the green paper is to establish a European policy debate
on how to anticipate and find common solutions and new approaches, responding to the challenges that Europe
faces in relation to the demographic change, and to accomplish the strategic goal of increasing the number of
healthy living years within the European population.
AS a response to the COVID crisis, the European Commission also published in 2021, the European Pillar of
Social Rights Action Plan, and in this plan, inequalities and a life in dignity are some of the prioritized principles,
together with the promotion of health and ensuring care for all.
Within these principles, it is stated that it is important to invest in children and early interventions, which can help
preventing that inequalities are installed already early in life, which is perfectly in line with the principles of the
SHE Approach, and the research that lies behind.
The Green paper on ageing recognizes that what we learn and experience in early childhood affects us for the
rest of our lives. Living a “healthy childhood” in general terms shape our future prospects, health situation and
well-being.
Lastly, the Green Paper on ageing points out two major European policy contexts which can be applied to
obtain a European society which is ageing well and these are; Healthy and Active Ageing and Lifelong Learning.
It is acknowledged that both approaches work best when they are implemented at an early age, as they are
relevant and essential for the entire life cycle.
Based on these policy papers and initiatives it seems like European focus on the action areas for SHE has been
intensified, and it is therefore more than ever relevant to put the ERASMUS + program into action in the field of
health promotion in schools, as it is now commonly accepted that quality education from early childhood, and
good health go “hand in hand”.
Based on this perspective, SHE has created the SHE4AHA project together with SHE coordinators from
Denmark, Iceland, France, Slovenia and Portugal.
Objective of SHE4AHA
Together with the SHE coordinators and at least 3 pilot schools in each participating country, the SHE4AHA
project develops easily accessible training material to schools on how to become a health promoting school and
run pilot projects in each of the 15 pilot schools to gather good practice examples on how schools actually work
with this.
These good practice examples will be gathered into a catalogue and a set of recommendations that can used on
European and national level to promote the uptake of the health promoting school approach as an
acknowledged and evidence-based solution to promote active and health ageing already from early childhood.
The project will present these materials to the European Commission, and hopefully they will acknowledge the
work from the SHE4AHA project as a concrete an accessible contribution to the implementation of their
European strategy within active and healthy ageing, in which their will engage to disseminate further to the
member states.
Working with local schools
Five SHE member countries participate in SHE4AHA, namely Denmark, Iceland, France, Portugal and Slovenia. In
each country, collaboration has been established with at least 3 pilot schools, which receive training from the
SHE4AHA partners, who are all SHE coordinators.
The basis for the training is a short version of the SHE Manual, that the partners have developed. This short
version has been developed with the main objective to make the HPS approach more accessible to school
managers and school teachers.
Based on this manual, three training sessions have been developed and carried out in each participating country.
Themes for the training have e.g., been; introduction to health promotion and the HPS approach (including the
values and pillars), health determinants and health (in)equalities, social inclusion and the importance of positive
relations, pilot project management and implementation processes and evaluation processes.
In most countries, training has been organized as common training sessions with the 3 pilot schools, in either an
online or face to face version, as it has shown to be very useful for the schools to exchange experiences, and
have fruitful discussions about how the implementation of the HPS approach can assist schools to apply to
national standards and / or use national training guidelines actively and in a whole school approach. In the
training and through the pilot projects, it is important to give the schools a sense of working actively and more
strategically with health promotion shall be an “ad in” to their existing activities or goals, and not an “ad on”,
that only gives them additional work.
The participating schools, as well as the pilot projects they have chosen to implement are very diversified. Some
schools are very small situated in rural areas, others are bigger and situated in bigger cities. The pilot projects
cover children from 6 to 14 years of age, and the themes for the pilot projects run from e.g. awareness raising
about healthy lunch breaks and boxes, introducing physical activities in the teaching situation to creating
positive social relations in the class and with the parents. Describing all these diversities has as objective to
show, that there is not a specific school standard required to work with the health promoting school approach,
nor is there a given or specific subject that a school needs to work with. The important issue is, that when
schools are developing and implementing concrete HPS pilot projects, they are aware of the SHE values and
SHE pillars, and try to work within this given frame.
The SHE4AHA project has provided the schools with different process tools that can assist them to keep focus
on the approach in the process, such as a process mapping tool and an evaluation process tool.
What have we produced until now?
The SHE4AHA project has developed its own website, which can either be accessed through the SHE website:
or directly at: https://healththroughoutlife.eu/
At this stage of the project, the website is only a project window, but by the end of the SHE4AHA project, in the
spring 2025, you will be able to find all the material that the project has developed such as the short version of
the SHE manual, recommendations and good practice examples on how schools have worked with the SHE
material and implemented HPS pilot projects and created small and big changes for actors in different kind of
school communities.
A short version of the SHE manual has been produced, which is accessible from the website. The motivation to
develop a shorter version of the SHE manual was that the original manual, which is more than 70 pages long, has
shown to be too comprehensive and academic to be a hands on manual for school managers and teachers.
We have also produced different process tools which makes it easier for schools to keep track of their HPS
process and pilot projects.
But as the SHE4AHA project is only in its development and testing phase, all this material is only accessible in
draft versions. When all 15 pilot schools have implemented their pilot projects, and we have evaluated and
gathered impressions from the different school community stakeholders, final versions will be accessible
together with good practice examples and hands on recommendations.
The SHE4AHA project is interesting for you if…..
- You are a school manager and want to create strategic changes in your school and become a health
promoting school - You are a school teacher;
- wanting to work in different ways with health in the classroom – or outside
- looking for ways to make your teaching more physical active
- wanting to give more empowerment to your pupils and teach them how to make healthy
choices in their lives
- If you are a teacher student teacher, wanting to prepare your students to learn about the health
promoting schools - If you are working in an organization providing vocational training to teachers, seeing a potential in
teachers knowing about the health promoting school approach
- You are a school manager and want to create strategic changes in your school and become a health
If you receive this newsletter and know any from the above-mentioned groups, whom you think could be
interested in the SHE4AHA project, we would like you to forward the newsletter to them.
If you want to know more about the SHE4AHA project in the 5 participating countries, you are more than
welcome to contact the SHE coordinator in each of the participating country.
Upcoming SHE Newsletter
As mentioned in the beginning of the newsletter, SHE has become part of several EU projects within the latest
year, and in the next SHE Newsletter, you will be introduced to another ERASMUS + project, called PLACES,
that has participation from SHE coordinators from Denmark, Italy and Grece, as well as a new partner from
Belgium.
In PLACES, partners are developing a didactic teaching design and teaching material that is based on playful
learning, design thinking, storytelling and the HPS approach, that has the sustainable development goals as
subject matters. And especially the ones being most relevant for SHE, namely Health (SDG 3), Quality Education
(SDG 4) and Equality and Social Inclusion (SDG 10).