Strengthening inclusive, healthy and sustainable neighbourhood communities
Lead partner:
Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften St. Pölten GmbH
Scientific management:
Michaela Moser
Additional participating institutions:
Diakonie Flüchtlingsdienst GmbH
Field(s) of action:
Society and culture
Health and nutrition
Environment, climate and ressources
Scientific discipline(s):
5090 - Andere Sozialwissenschaften (60 %)
3030 - Gesundheitswissenschaften (40 %)
Funding tool: Citizen Science
Project-ID: FTI24-C-018
Project start: 01. Oktober 2025
Project end: 30. September 2028
Runtime: 36 months / ongoing
Funding amount: € 360.000,00
Brief summary:
The SINN project (Strengthening Inclusive, Healthy, and Sustainable Neighborhoods) promotes inclusive, healthy, and sustainable communities in small and medium-sized towns. It explores how community-based physical and cooking activities can simultaneously foster health, sustainability, and inclusion. A bottom-up approach, developed in collaboration with residents of a neighbourhood in St. Pölten, ensures that local needs are taken into account.
The project investigates how health, inclusion, and sustainability can be interconnected through community-based activities, the factors crucial to their success, and the role universities can play as drivers of these developments.
SINN addresses a research gap by integrating the fields of inclusion, health promotion, and sustainability. This interdisciplinary approach generates new knowledge about how communities can tackle global challenges through local action. The project contributes to research in community development, citizen science, and public health by providing empirical data and practical insights into how small and medium-sized towns can thrive through community-driven strategies.
SINN is implemented as a community-based participatory project, with citizens centrally involved in all parts of the project.
SINN supports several UN Sustainable Development Goals (including SDG 1, 3, 11, 13). The findings will be disseminated through open-access publications, conferences, and a toolkit containing best-practice guidelines to ensure transferability to other regions.
Through international partnerships, particularly with the E³UDRES²-European University Alliance, SINN has the potential to influence academic research, inform policy decisions, and shape similar initiatives across Europe.
Keywords:
Inclusion, Sustainability, Health Promotion, Diet, Food Literacy, Physical Activity, Action Research, Community Care,