Sustainable Development Goals: How illuminAid Is Helping Advance the United Nations’ Goals to Transform Our World
The international community is facing several pressing global issues that pose as a barrier to continuing global development and sustainability, but how can we as people even begin to tackle problems as vast and unending as to battle global hunger and sustain vital resources? One plan of action that the global community has collectively implemented through the United Nations is the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs.
The United Nations has recently put forward a global campaign to combat global inequalities and focus on the developing world with an aim of progressing the most basic fundamental duty of “leaving no one behind.” Launched by the UN in 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals are a total of 17 objectives that lay out a plan to aid in bettering the most underdeveloped parts of the world by the year 2030. From climate action to a zero hunger objective, these topics, amongst others, have been selected and emphasized in an attempt to achieve sustainable development on a global level. The SDGs build off of the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, that the world leaders established through the United Nations in 2000 with eight goals that were agreed to be worked on and achieved by 2015. These goals had a target of reaching a halfway point with global hunger and the other specified objectives. This means that ideally, the MDGs would solve fifty percent of all goals, such as global hunger, so that the new SDGs can work to fulfill the other fifty percent. The SDGs build off a strong foundation set by the MDGs focusing on revised “zero goals” that are designed to work from where MDGs concluded and aim for a statistical zero in categories such as hunger, preventable child deaths, and poverty.
While illuminAid touches on several of these goals, we reside most firmly in the 17th goal that aims to “Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.”
Specifically, we focus on the technology target subsections 17.6, 17.7, 17.8, and the capacity building section covered in 17.9. Sustainable Development Goal 17 lays out targets for technology and capacity building that utilize partners in the international community to provide access to technology and innovation in order to enhance sustainability and implement developmental practices.
Specifically, SDG Goal 17 advocates for a variety of targets including mutual knowledge enhancement between North-South and South-South countries, meaning that information is shared fluidly among less-developed nations in the Southern hemisphere, and with those nations that are developed in the Northern hemisphere. Promotion of development, dissemination, and implementation of environmentally-friendly technologies and practices are also all pieces of this specific goal. The task of implementing better information and communications technology in the least developed nations and heightening global support for the implementation of efficient and focused capacity-building adds to SDG Goal 17 as well. These lofty goals are currently being worked on by international organizations all around the globe, including us here at illuminAid.
illuminAid was founded on the idea that access to technology can bring forth social and behavioral change for the better. With easily accessible and operable equipment, information can be quickly and efficiently presented and disseminated to further educate and promote sustainable practices in areas such as farming, health and wellness, and education. As a part of the international support for technological innovation and capacity building, we are progressing these development goals by partnering with organizations to teach them how to create and distribute vital and developmental information to the bottom billion through video technology and presentations that can be catered to the specific region, language, and issue.
Providing technology equipment and visual aids vastly improve people’s understanding and implementation of sustainable practices, which ultimately fosters development and increases health, education, and productivity. illuminAid has partnered with organizations all over the globe to complete over 30 developmental projects where our devices were introduced and utilized to create and share information that advances the organizations’ capacity for development and empowers individuals to make positive social and behavioral changes. Our mission to aid in educating the globe’s poorest billion people through low-cost video technology goes hand-in-hand with Sustainable Development Goal 17, and we are continuously working to further global development initiatives one project at a time.
Sources:
https://advocacy.thp.org/2014/08/08/mdgs-to-sdgs/
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs
