Austin continues forging its path towards the Global Goals for Sustainable Development
On Wednesday May 16th, 2018, Austin’s community of social impact and innovators gathered at Impact Hub Monroe in Austin, to continue the conversation that was started last month. The event was a follow up from Think Global, Act Local, Global Goals 101. This one was named Think Global, Act Local: Unravelling the Data.
SocialGood.us committed to bringing forth the results of that first conversation on April 24 and then seeing what new insights and opportunities could be obtained.
Céline Steer showcased the results of what the April 24 group felt to be some of the largest issues affecting our community. As you might suspect, affordability, mobility, and inequalities were all top ranking issues. See the presentation with all results here.
This is why Jay Blazek Crossley, from Farm+City was invited to come and speak about the intersectionality of different topics and how they are all related to one another. “We must work together and break down silos to find new solutions”, Crossley mentioned. The goal is to understand the overlaps and make moves that take adjacent issues into consideration when thinking about policy, planning and growth for the Austin Metropolitan Area.
The Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the Global Goals for Sustainable Development is the global framework through which local communities in Austin are using to identify, coordinate and implement areas of impact in a positive manner. SocialGood.us’s mission is help bring the entire community together on a platform that would help facilitate this process. They are starting in Austin, and they hope to expand to other cities in the near future.
That evening, as groups were created and activities commenced, there were two objectives.
- Identify a sample of issues and in essence “reverse engineer” them to map them to the different goals and thus understand the intersectionalities between issues and goals
- Brainstorm ideas of what tools and features would be helpful in a tool that would help facilitate collaboration for solution implementation.
Focus on Intersectionalities and solutions
Homelessness, traffic, affordability, gentrification and income disparities were the issues chosen, as they were the issues that were most commonly mentioned in the April 24 meetup. The groups dove in deep in a brainstorming sprint discussing and debating which of the goals intersected with one of those issues.
The groups were then asked to focus on one issue-goal combination, not an easy task when all of the issues and goals are interconnected, and to derive potential solutions to address that community issue. Several solutions were created from each group and they were then asked to share with the entire attendees. Time was limited to come up with fully fledged solution but the groups identified the following as starting points to address the issues aforementioned: mobile clinics, training and educational programs that allow to obtain practical skills to get jobs, enabling communal living with good transportation options, safe streets, protecting against predatory practices leading to displacement, providing legal counsel for populations at risk of being displaced, easing the process of displacement, enabling section 8 quotas, and many others.
Crowdsourcing features for an online platform
After sharing and discussing some of the ideas, the groups were shuffled again and asked to think about what features an online platform would be best suited to promote collaboration and solutions for these issues. Dozens of features were written down and SocialGood.us captured these insights and will be taking them to their development team to prioritize.
What’s next?
ATX Hack For Change is presenting its 6th annual hackathon at St. Edwards University on June 1st-3rd and SocialGood.us has been invited to be a project champion so that the initial prototype of this social impact map and directory can be built out and gather more community support. The first stage will be a functioning directory that will list all the non-profits, corporations, and government agencies who are focused on creating impact and advancing the SDG’s. The communities feedback and support is welcomed to better help refine what this tool can truly offer.
On June 27th, 2018 the next Social Innovators Meetup will take place and SocialGood.us will be hosting some design thinking sprints mapped out for the Global Goals. Each month through June-August they will have a sprint meetup and help raised more awareness of the goals and their ability to help create a space for shared knowledge and resources.
In September, SocialGood.us will be presenting the launch of the “Global Goals Jam” in Austin and joining over 40 cities globally who will be hosting their own Jam “hackathon” around the SDG’s/GlobalGoals. The dates are the 21st-23rd of September, 2018. If you would like to learn more, participate or sponsor you can join our meetup group and also contact the SocialGood.us team.
