This article presents the relationship between the Strategy of Non-Formal Development Education of the city of Valencia and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The content of the Strategy is based on three fundamental axes: 1) a territorial approach in the neighbourhood or district; 2) the importance of coordination between municipal actors and NGDOS to develop educational proposals and 3) a series of priority themes and methodologies. The correspondence of the Strategy with the SDGS has been interpreted using an analytical framework designed for transformative innovation. This interpretation distinguishes between SDGS that define socio-technical systems or areas of application; those that define directionality and those that indicate context conditions. This interpretation can contribute to increase the reflection on the transformatory potential of educational actions in a synergic way, avoiding compartmentalized perspectives. On the other hand, it highlights the importance of networks and coordination between actors in the city and its neighbourhoods. These are the spaces that need to be transformed and from which transformations can start.

In a university environment dominated by a traditional way of understanding knowledge, we argue that it is possible and necessary to foster capabilities among engineering students. Capabilities are understood as reasoned and substantive freedoms to lead the kind of life that people value, within a framework of respect for the core values of human development. In this sense, enhancing capabilities means fostering pro-public-good professionalism.With insight from an interview study conducted at the Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia, in Spain, we will argue how formal and informal spaces have the potential to foster capabilities such participation, commitment, empathy, intercultural respect, critical thinking and selfreflexivity. These kinds of learning could be understood as a mixture of Procedural Know-how and Personal know how (Muller in this issue); as we will discuss in the last part of this paper, this kind of knowledge is difficult to assimilate within the framework of the terminology of skills and competences. Some recommendations for a capability oriented curriculum are presented in the final section.

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