The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals
It’s easy to feel as though what you do isn’t making a difference. When working on solutions for the “big issues” of the day, students might wonder, “What’s the point?” Enter the University of Guelph’s Sustainability Office, who hosted the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Youth Training this past Saturday.
The day-long event brought together those at U of G who want to make a difference and achieve the 17 SDGs put forth by the UN.
“Our main goal with this event was to empower students to realize that they can contribute to SDGs through small actions locally, and that these can have a huge impact,” says Madeleine Chauvin of the Sustainability Office.
The main speaker at the event was Julie Marshall, the Canadian spokesperson for the World Food Programme (WFP).
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Marshall explained what WFP is all about and shared that for every dollar donated to WFP, 94 cents go to fieldwork. Some of the ways WFP is working to help achieve the goals — specifically goal number one (“No Poverty”) and goal number two (“Zero Hunger”) — include:
- Disaster relief
- School food programs
- Take-home rations for schoolchildren in countries like Ghana
- Supporting local producers in the communities they’re working in
Marshall stressed the importance of youth involvement with the WFP’s work. “I’m looking for an army of youth that will help me spread information on WFP,” she said. “Social media is a better base, with a bigger niche and you all have networks, very important networks, which will help raise awareness on issues and the SDGs.”
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Steve Lee, the executive director of the Foundation of Environmental Stewardship (FES) gave the room of young people ideas on how they, at the university level, could start making a difference in relation to the goals.
“Advocacy and local implementation. That’s how we’re going about working towards fixing these problems,” said Lee.
Lee left the room with four ideas on how to get university students engaged:
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- Promoting gender parity in all settings
- Questioning where the university invests its money
- Implementing a student fee to support the SDGs
- Educating each and every U of G student on the SDGs
Photo by Sam Janjac.