Promote the SDGs and You’ll Promote Your NGO
One of the hottest global buzzwords nowadays is “SDG” and civil society should position itself to capitalize on it.
SDG stands for Sustainable Development Goals, which were developed and adopted a year ago in the hallowed halls of the United Nations by a partnership of 193 member-states, including the United States, and non-governmental organizations – also known as civil society or nonprofits – that regularly participate in the UN system.
By getting behind this campaign, your NGO will not only promote the universal benefits of these goals but you will raise awareness about your organization’s objectives, issues and work. Promoting the SDGs even on a local level will effectively contribute to your group’s outreach. Consequently, this will enhance your position vis-à-vis potential sponsors.
The SDGs evolved from the Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight targets that were composed in time for the millennium 16 years ago but ultimately deemed insufficient to improve life as we know it on this planet.
As a result, they were expanded to include 17 goals and 169 targets that address critical issues facing the world and cities, even your hometown, such as the eradication of extreme poverty, tackling global inequality and climate change, promoting sustainable urbanization and industrial development, protecting natural ecosystems, and fostering growth of peaceful and inclusive communities and governing institutions. Hopefully these goals and targets will be attained within 15 years, by 2030 thus their secondary moniker – 2030 Agenda. (Click to see all of them: http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/).
Regardless of your NGO’s objectives or your beliefs, the SDGs offer a goal for everyone. Furthermore, the SDG agenda has been crafted with input from millions of stakeholders, making the SDGs a “people’s agenda.” They’re not only about climate change, global warming or ecology; they’re also about education, health and urban life.
The SDG framework responds to what local residents and civil activists like you want everywhere on earth. The pursuit of sustainable development is considered to have the potential to improve the quality of life for you and your neighbors, and promote new economic opportunities for green growth. As the world turns toward more sustainable modes of living and development, which you can readily observe, cities and communities that invest in sustainability today will be ahead of the curve and accrue a competitive edge over other regions for development and investment.
Therefore, your NGO should plan to promote aggressively this global initiative in your hometown not by jumping on the bandwagon but by leading it; not by yourselves but in partnership with other similar or disparate groups. Incidentally, building partnerships with stakeholders or networking is also a part of the SDGs.
Call your mayor’s office and ask for an appointment to discuss how your hometown can begin an SDG program. Tell your hometown officials about the SDG roadmap that will help them commit to pursuing sustainable urban development. The SDGs provide guidelines with concrete goals and targets that can help cities become more sustainable.
Convene a local 2030 Agenda commission that will include representatives of your hometown administration, civil society and clergy, and begin raising awareness among residents, schools, children, businesses and visitors about the value of the SDGs. As you lead this initiative, you will see how others near and far will join your cause or create their own commissions.
It’s not a difficult task.
At a recent UN panel discussion on the SDGs, Dr. Martin Edwards, director of the Center for United Nations and Global Governance Studies, Seton Hall University, observed that if “we can explain the Sustainable Development Goals to elementary school kids, we can surely explain it to adults.” He then emphasized that “if we empower citizens, we can help the world become better.”
At the same event, Lauren Barredo, manager of the Thematic Groups on Health, Agriculture, and Extractive Industries, Sustainable Development Solutions Network, highlighted the importance that youth play in the SDG campaign.
“We have found that young people are really good communicators for sustainable development” and identified this as the reason why civil society should “engage them in the creation of innovative and sustainable solutions to global development challenges.”
Helen Clark, administrator of the UN Development Program and candidate for the post of UN secretary-general, observed that “when we speak of equity and justice, we are asked to think not only of the present, but also about the future – the world we will leave to our children. 2030 Agenda commits to achieve these goals by the year 2030 and to do so for everyone, everywhere, with no one left behind.”
As you launch your SDG campaign, don’t forget to promote your work horizontally across the civil society bandwidth and vertically with hometown, county, state and federal officials, schools, news media, corporations and other potential partners. Distribute press releases – yes, the old-fashioned media are still productive. Take photos and post them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and elsewhere. Share them and retweet others’ photos and posts. Don’t forget to use the appropriate Twitter handles, which are easy to find on the Internet and don’t forget to use hashtags such as #UN, #SDGs, #NGO, #2030Agenda, #UNDPINGO, #NGODPI, #civilsociety, #globalgoals, and others.
This will help you throw your informational net across a wide spectrum of potential followers that will be attracted to your NGO and the SDGs.
In the next post, I will show how small businesses can benefit from this campaign.
No comments:
Post a Comment