Concours des Ecoles Fleuries (DDEN + OCCE)
Ministry-backed contest valorizing student-led gardening and floral projects at school and around the school. Two-stage: department-level juries select winners who progress to the national prize, with special prizes for cooperative pedagogy, biodiversity, citizenship.
Department-level rankings (Departement-vs-Departement bragging rights) feeding a national final; departmental DDEN federations promote 'their' department's winners.
Each entry requires whole-class collaboration plus partnership with parents, the mairie, local florists, garden centres and DDEN volunteers - a tight school-neighborhood team forms per entry.
Long-standing French variant that is almost never cited in English lists; the department-stage-then-national bracket is the same pattern BelongHub catalogs but in a non-English civic register.
Others in the same family
Modeshift STARS National School Travel League
National accreditation scheme that publishes league tables ranking local authorities by percentage of schools holding a Modeshift STARS travel plan (Bronze through Platinum). Bucks and South Gloucestershire repeatedly top the large-authority table.
Schools Recycle Right Challenge (Planet Ark) + Battle of the Schools
Planet Ark's National Recycling Week schools programme provides activity guides and event ideas; in regions like Hervey Bay (QLD) Express Recycling runs a Battle of the Schools where schools compete by weight collected with $500 cash prizes.
City Nature Challenge
Started 2016 as LA-vs-SF friendly competition; now an annual end-of-April 4-day bioblitz where cities compete on most observations, most species, most participants. Using iNaturalist. Run by California Academy of Sciences + Natural History Museum LA.
Beat the Street
Town-wide gamified active travel intervention created by GP Dr William Bird (Intelligent Health Ltd) where residents tap RFID 'Beat Boxes' on lampposts while walking/cycling/wheeling between them within an hour windows to score team points. Runs as 6-week community-wide tournaments. 1.9M+ participants across UK and abroad. Multiple peer-reviewed pilot evaluations (Coombes & Jones 2018, Harris et al. 2023 in Health Promotion Practice).
Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel (formerly Big Pedal)
UK's largest inter-school active-travel challenge run by Walk Wheel Cycle Trust (Sustrans). For two weeks, schools log every walked, wheeled, scooted or cycled journey via a school portal; a school's best five days determine final position on a national leaderboard, with badges and certificates.
Walk with a Doc
Free monthly walks anchored at parks/trails, each led by a local doctor or medical student. Format: 5-minute health-topic talk by the doc, then 45-60 min walk together. Designed for social connection + nature + physical activity + health education simultaneously. Open chapter model means anyone can start one.