The UN’s SDGs: how to get from 169 targets to the 1 you care about
BeyondMe’s Joel Cohen tries to break down the Sustainable Development Goals for today. How will you contribute?
Any advertiser worth their salt will tell you: if you want to know your market you’ve got to find out what your customer wants.
Neither BeyondMe, nor any of our portfolio charities are advertisers, but we do try to meet a demand: from young professionals looking for a better way to create meaningful social impact and from charities seeking the extra capacity, resources and long-term relationships generated through BeyondMe partnerships.
So how do we know what kinds of partnerships will ensure a better quality of life for us all? One way to do this, is to ask people.
In the process of making the Sustainable Development Goals, a set of global targets to replace the Millennium ones before them, the UN conducted the world’s largest consultation process: they asked everyone — in developed and developing countries and across government, businesses and civil society organisations.
The result is the current list — 17 goals with 169 corresponding targets.
At the time The Economist called them, “worse than useless”. But as the SDGs were decided, to the greatest degree possible, by the countries, organisations and people that will be implementing the goals and affected by them, can we really turn away from them so easily?
Perhaps Pope Francis was right to warn against allowing a “bureaucratic exercise … drawing up long lists of good proposals” to undermine individual’s responsibility for tackling social challenges.
Fast forward a year and the SDGs have been accepted as the basis of global development efforts.
Instead of getting caught in this debate again (though by all means, have a listen to what people have argued at the time), what does matter is what happens now.
Clearly no one person can do all 169 — it is not Pokemon Go.
So how do we narrow down the list of possibilities to something practical and do-able for charities and businesses today?
Here Pope Francis’ critical call can serve as a call to action: the list isn’t a replacement for personal initiative, nor does it absolve us of responsibility to make an impact on the world we see in front of us. So pick something local, something tangible and crucially something genuinely useful to the people, groups or goals you hope to help.
This is the challenge that our portfolio charities and young professionals in the BeyondMe movement face and the value of our partnerships between charities and businesses. Its more rewarding than just singing about it, we guarantee:
Disagree? To discuss these issues, join us on Tuesday 26th October
Where Lord Hastings, Global Head of Citizenship at KPMG will be Demystifying the SDGs.
Working on your SDG related project?
Get in touch to see how young professionals can help add capacity, skills and money to support your work at www.BeyondMe.org
