People Driven Accountability Side Panel Event During 65th Annual DPI-NGO Conference

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“An agenda that is built on the priorities of people will be a better agenda – it will respond more to their needs, to their aspirations, and how they want to live their lives.”

– Paul Ladd, People Driven Accountability Workshop, DPI-NGO Conference

New York City – August 28, 2014

The United Nations Millennium Campaign (UNMC) and the World We Want 2015 Policy Strategy Group presented the People’s Voices Workshop on August 28, 2014 during the 65th Annual DPI-NGO Conference. The workshop, titled ‘People Driven Accountability’ presented examples of the UN Millennium Campaign’s strategy for ensuring the millions of voices, hopes and dreams of people from around the world are heard by world leaders as they negotiate the post-2015 development agenda.

Ms. Rosa Lizarde, Co-chair of the World We Want 2015 Policy Strategy Group, moderated the workshop, and the keynote address was given by Mr. Nicholas Pron, Special Advisor to the President of the United Nations General Assembly. Panelists included Paul Ladd, UNDP Post-2015 Team Lead, Ghazala Mehmood, Policy Strategy Group Member representing Barakat Incorporation, Niels Caszo, President of AIESEC US representing youth-led organizations, and Mohan Sunkara, the CEO of Azri Data Engineering. Ravi Karkara, UNMC Post-2015 Strategic Partnerships Advisor and Co-chair of the World We Want 2015 Policy Strategy Group offered the closing remark for the workshop.

The workshop focused on how MY World 2015 and the World We Want 2015 are tools which allow people to have a say in UN Processes. The MY World Survey has so far accumulated the voices of over 4 million people from 194 countries.  The World We Want 2015 platform  steers discussions on the post-2015 agenda and enhances civil society’s participation to ensure that people’s voices are taken into consideration when drafting the new development agenda. The results of the MY World Survey are hosted in the World We Want 2015 Trends page and they complement the global consultative exercises by UNDG and by civil society organizations worldwide in light of building an inclusive future development agenda after the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) end in 2015.  All of this open data is available for anyone to access, so “everyone can use this data to make a strong case and point and to hold governments to account,” as Ravi Karkara pointed out during the workshop.

In addition, these platforms were designed to allow the UN to have a close relationship with civil society, as Ghazala Mehmood noted in the workshop. The World We Want Policy and Strategy Group invites members to exchange information and unite around campaigns for issues related to post-2015, thus giving her small NGO – dedicated to providing exemplary basic education in Afghanistan and Pakistan that advances literacy and increases access to secondary education, particularly for girls and women — the ability to be heard and to access the UN in a way never before possible. Similarly MY World owes much of its success to the fact that it is an open platform where people and organizations not only add their vote, but also inspire their communities and constituencies to vote. AIESEC US just recently became an official partner and has such designed a strategy for not only engaging its national chapter members, but also a system for them to engage further in their universities, and communities.

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