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Understanding UN SDGs
Now is the time to understand the UN’s Goals for 2030
As a child, I felt a connection to the UN, perhaps because it was born in the same year I was, perhaps because it captured my imagination as a global protector and defender. However, that connection was stretched thin by a life with other priorities, until I became friends with Barbara Gaughen-Muller who had traveled the world for seventeen peace-building years with her husband Robert Muller, whose life's work revolved around the UN and peace.
After working with three SecretaryGenerals, Robert developed a reputation as the heart of the UN and is still revered for his championing of many of the projects that makes the UN what it is today and his prolific writings on peace, happiness, and ideas for a better world.
A year ago, Barbara offered me an opportunity to be the editor of her Peace Community Magazine and I leaped in, not knowing how little I understood the role of the United Nations in our world today. It's easy to think of the UN as an expensive building in New York and find fault when It fails to end a war of aggression by one of the five founding countries that were given blanket veto rights as part of the negotiation for their joining the fledgling project.
It's more challenging to understand the scope of good they do for the 8 billion of us living in 195 countries which now exist on our only home: planet Earth.
From the time I took on this role, I heard about the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, but had little understanding of what they were. As we began to put together the January, 2023 issue, I realized it was time to understand those goals, or at least their basics.
This document, with all the information taken directly from the UN's website, was created to help me understand the scope of these goals. In the process of creating it, I fell in love with the United Nations and its aspirations for our world, for every aspect of the glorious planet we live on and for every single human and living being that breathes the air so graciously provided us.
It is with great gratitude that we share this overview with the hopes that it will help you understand what a champion we, all of us everywhere, have in this amazing global voice we call the United Nations. Joyce Wycoff, Editor,
Peace Community Magazine
The SDGs are the To Do list for the world.
