Youth 4 Global Goals: Are You SDGs Warriors? Before we start going deeper to Youth 4 Global Goals, do you guys really have understood what SDGs really is? I know it is silly for an AIESECer for not knowing SDGs, but yeah, we need to restate it, so we have same perception towards it. SDGs itself stands for Sustainable Development Goals and are goals the world must achieve by 2030. Great now you’re counting how many years left to go, right? We only have around 11 years!
Figure 1 17 Global Goals by UN. source: https://www.un.org/
The official website of UNDP 1 states “Global Goals are a universal call to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.” SDGs were born at UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in 2012. There are 17 points that become our focus on development in SDGs. You guys, AIESECers, must have been familiar with Goal 1: No Poverty, Goal 4: Quality Education, Goal 5: Gender Equality, Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth. Yes, they are all main SDGs to implement in our GV Projects. Okay, I get it, now I know about SDGs and the brief history of it. Now, we are AIESECers always promoting SDGs in all our activities, but why? Because we have initiatives partnership with UN called Youth 4 Global Goals. As written in the official UN website 2 page for Sustainable Development, Youth 4
1 https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals/background/ 2 https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/
Global Goals aims to activate young people to contribute towards the achievement of SDGs. Since then, almost all our activities always relate to SDGs. Now you may be wondering, how we, as only students’ organization can advocate the SDGs to people. In the same web page, it stated the 3 main strategies, which are Awareness, Understanding, and Action3. In the Awareness stage, we consider that youth is aware to SDGs when they know that there are 17 goals and they are due to 2030. We do this through social media campaigns, Outgoing Preparation Seminar, and IGV Projects. The next stage, Understanding, is achieved when the youth know the target of one SDG and know how to contribute. Youth Speak Forum, SDGs Curriculum, and Incoming Preparation Seminar are ways to get youth to the second stage. The last stage, Action, marked succeed when youth actively contribute to SDGs through daily actions. AIESEC contribute to this with GV Projects, Conferences, and another SDGs program. Of course, we have target in every strategy we do. In AIESEC official website 4, we have to achieve minimum 1,000,000 people aware with SDGs, 100,000 people understand how to contribute, and 50,000 people acting upon the SDGs.
Figure 2 Youth in Surakarta promoting Global Goals in Walk for SDGs. Source: AIESEC Indonesia documentation
AIESEC in Indonesia has one special campaign to advocate awareness of SDGs in youth. It is called Walk for SDGs, I bet you know this so well, right? AIESEC has implemented Walk for SDGs since 2016 in many big cities in Indonesia. And the most recent Walk for SDGs was implemented on 28th April 3 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/partnership/?p=13488 4 https://aiesec.org/youth-for-global-goals
2019 in 5 cities successfully. Thanks to strong excitement and well contribution from LCs, in this April, youth raised awareness of SDGs in Surabaya, Bekasi, Purwokerto, Jember, and Surakarta. Walk for SDGs is a campaign to promote and advocate SDGs to people outside AIESEC, especially youth. It starts with walking in crowd, holding SDGs banner, popping up SDGs cards, and singing the jingle. It is always implemented on Sunday morning where people usually doing exercise or just simply walking in Car Free Day. The march attracts people attention and get them aware of what SDGs is. The jingle we used is a modified Balonku Ada Lima song. We changed the lyrics to: “Tujuh belas global goals, rupa-rupa isunya. Tiga paling utama, di Indonesia kita. Tuntaskan kemiskinan, turunkan pengangguran, majukan pendidikan. Indonesia sejahtera.� This simple song can be easily memorized by people in CFD that means, we successfully convey the message about SDGs awareness.
Figure 3 Youth signing the banner to show commitment of implementing SDGs. Source: AIESEC Indonesia documentation
After a long march, the campaigner will gather in meeting point or main booth. There we have games, quizzes, roll dances, and speech from the influencers and partners about the SDGs. In this session, public have access to simply ask or get to know about SDGs deeper. At the end of the event, we sign the banner to show our commitment as youth to implement SDGs in our daily life. So, with all the excitement and positive vibes in Youth 4 Global Goals, we AIESECer, proudly will always promote and implement SDGs. Are you going to be the one too??