ISCA President Mogens Kirkeby and ECF MOVE Week coordinator Acacia Smith at the Belgian federal department of finances' 'Breakfast for Cyclists'

For the third year running, ECF played a big role in co-ordinating MOVE Week with ECF members in Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Austria and the Czech Republic all taking part. This year, we took on a new responsibility, to coordinate MOVE Week in Belgium, and we succeeded in getting one of the biggest federal departments on board - we activated the Belgian Ministry of Finance and got close to 10,000 employees moving! This huge success is an example of the great cross-sectoral reach we can all achieve by building partnerships. By teaming up with ISCA for MOVE Week, ECF has been able to flex its physical activity lobbying muscles and ISCA has been able to reach whole new sectors with our help.

Growing physical activity presence
ECF’s growing presence in the health and physical activity dimension is apparent through our continued participation in high-level forums, such as last month’s DG SANCO Platform on health, diet and physical activity. This continues to give us unmissable opportunities to ensure physical activity is represented in the debate, alongside our partner ISCA.

ECF-ISCA partnership
The ECF-ISCA partnership is going from strength to strength as we can see through yet another successful edition of MOVE Week. Besides strengthening ECF’s voice in health and physical activity, this partnership is a great demonstration of our growing cross-sectoral reach. This means promoting cycling in whole new sectors!

ECF Members supporting MOVE Week
From cross-border hikes in the Czech Republic, to a cycling festival in Cyprus and to bike repair workshops in Greece; ECF members proved once again their enthusiasm for promoting cycling and physical activity. MOVE Week provides an excellent platform for our members to engage in pan-European awareness-raising and as always, they showed they are experts at activating people to cycle.

MOVE Week in Belgium = cross-sectoral engagement and success!
ECF’s location in Brussels allowed us to bring in a huge MOVE Week partner this year; the Belgian federal Ministry of Finance! Coordinating MOVE Week alongside ISCA has seen many benefits for the European week of physical activity. With focusses and geographic presence in different areas, we are able to bring in many new partners and participants.

From left: Belgian cyclist Jens Debusschere, federal department of finance HR Manager Kurt Van Raemdonck, ECF MOVE Week coordinator Acacia Smith, ISCA President Mogens Kirkeby and Belgian cyclist Jürgen Roelandts

Engaging a federal department is a huge success for MOVE Week; but engaging one that does not have a sport/ health focus is even more valuable. By bringing on board the 22,000 employee strong SPF Finances/ FOD Financiën, ECF has significantly increased the reach of MOVE Week to new areas.

Department of Finance gets moving
The federal department organised 4 week-long activities in 10 cities across Belgium, attracting close to 10,000 participants. They received a lot of positive feedback and many demands from employees to participate again by making MOVE Week 2015 even bigger than this year.

One of their key activities, placing trick-of-the-eye posters on lifts, encouraged employees to take the stairs where they were given a MOVE Week wristband. Over 5,000 wristbands were handed out during the week!

In another key action, over 600 employees across Belgium cycled to work to get a free breakfast and the chance to chat with famous cyclists over a coffee. ECF was at the kick-off breakfast alongside ISCA President, Mogens Kirkeby to demonstrate our support for their involvement in MOVE Week and in promoting cycling.

Other activities included guided lunchtime walks (over 400 participants), and a competition using pedometers to take as many steps as possible during the week (550 participants).

Another successful MOVE Week done and dusted
Thanks to our involvement in MOVE Week 2014, not only did we activate our members across Europe, we also reached 10,000 people in Belgium and spread the message well beyond the traditional audience. This success story shows just why these partnerships are so important and remain at the heart of ECF’s outreach work.