Each year until 2030 the team at Unreasonable Group will bring together highly scalable solutions armed with leading edge technologies and match them, during a two week gathering, with world-class mentors, select foundations, sovereign wealth funds, policy makers, multinational executives, and private equity firms to help scale-up their efforts to meet the SDGs.
Each year until 2030 the team at Unreasonable Group will bring together highly scalable solutions armed with leading edge technologies and match them, during a two week gathering, with world-class mentors, select foundations, sovereign wealth funds, policy makers, multinational executives, and private equity firms to help scale-up their efforts to meet the SDGs.
Unreasonable Goals is a first of its kind initiative with the singular focus of accelerating our ability to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by operating at the nexus of policy governments, finance, multinationals, and the world’s most promising impact entrepreneurs. This matters because every year, more than $120B is spent in international development assistance, yet this system has yet to produce the game-changing results we all know are needed.
Unreasonable Goals is designed to bring new problem solvers to the table: profitable entrepreneurs with cutting edge technologies that can, in partnership with governments and select multinationals worldwide, measurably, and with financially sustainable models, solve the SDGs. During its first year, this initiative cohort of 16 world-changing ventures hailed from all over the globe with operations spanning a variety of sectors, disciplines, and markets – from managing direct trade cacao sourcing and distribution in Guatemala, to producing off-grid wave powered clean energy in Australia, to operating the first Fair Trade Apparel company on the continent of Africa. Collectively the cohort positively impacts the lives of over 8.1 million individuals directly and in a measurably way and has operations and sales reaching 68 countries.
Furthermore, the 16 ventures represent the job-creators of tomorrow around sustainable industries and are already actively supporting more than 2,000 jobs. To-date the cohort has raised $170.9 million in collective funding since the program’s launch in July 2017. These 16 entrepreneurs were uniquely positioned to each solve one of the first 16 SDG’s and the 17th “entrepreneur” representing the 17th goals was the US government itself via the State Department.
This initiative will be running annually through 2030 and each year will host the program in partnership with a new international government. The ultimate aim is to create a program where innovative entrepreneurs, governments, and values aligned multinational corporations can all collaborate towards the goal of ending poverty, globally, in all its forms. The project’s vision is that each SDG is intertwined in such a way that none can be solved individually or in silos.
Who is behind this?
Daniel Epstein
Global agreements are okay but… let´s bring some action!
Major global agreements, overlapping agendas – Finding synergies to take action!
In an ever increasingly complex world we are observing a multitude of documents that contain concrete national commitments to the global common good of sustainable development. The two guiding global agreements -the Paris Climate Agreement and the 2030 Agenda- seek to halt climate change and foster sustainable development within planetary boundaries. To keep a systematic overview on these multiple commitments, to identify gaps where action is needed and to foster learning across countries and regions, NDC-SDG Connections visualises how concrete climate action commitments in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of countries can support the achievement of a multitude of SDGs and their targets at global, regional and national level.
NDC-SDG Connections provides a knowledge hub for thematic connectivity of the two global agendas that are kept separate in implementation but benefit heavily from thematic complementarity in implementation. This knowledge hub has been taken up very positively by nation states, asking for support to deepen their national dialogue of stakeholders to achieve the two agendas as one, as well as at UN level to foster synergies between the two agendas and achieve the global common good of sustainable development.
In a next step, this knowledge hub aims at integrating the actions and commitments countries have given in their sustainable development processes to implement the 2030 Agenda in order to truly carve out at global, regional and national level the thematic overlaps and gaps between the two agendas. Knowing about overlaps allows reducing redundancies in activities, identifying the gaps is of utmost importance to strengthen action to leave no one behind.
This initiative aims at stimulating the thematic dialogue across policy sectors to implement both agendas consistently and to provide a platform for learning from each other and jointly contributing to sustainable development for all and within our planetary boundaries.
Who is behind this?
Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) / Stockholm Environment Institute
“Let´s be together, let´s be inclusive, let´s be united and leave no one behind / Hold hands in hands and move forward / Leave no one behind, say this together”. This is how the song of this campaign begins!
Advocacy in Pakistan sets the beat and everyone should be dancing
“Let´s be together, let´s be inclusive, let´s be united and leave no one behind / Hold hands in hands and move forward / Leave no one behind, say this together”.
This is how the song of the “Leave no one behind” campaign begins. Its original language is in Urdu, the official language of Pakistan and it was broadcasted through radio and social media across the country. Policies- to-action forums were also organized across the country, as a campaign during the last 500 days of the Millenium Development Goals (MDG) and to help kick off the post-2015 consultations with different stakeholders including governments, academia, companies, media, students and the most marginalized and socially excluded groups like religious and sexual minorities. Almost all of them were unaware of the MDGs and wanted to be part of such transformative agenda.
Based upon the “Leave no one behind” campaign and findings of the consultations, the team developed a documentary and a song in Urdu to popularize the MDG/SDGs agenda to the masses. AwazCDS/PDA is now the only leading platform in the country that has mobilized the people from all walks of life for better understanding and implementing the SDGs through better governance and greater accountability. This initiative has also sensitized the parliamentarians in Pakistan who have been engaged in SDG taskforces at national and provincial levels to oversee the implementation of the goals.
The national government has institutionalized the creation of SDG Units at planning and development levels in order to introduce the 2030 Agenda in annual and multiyear developmental and financial plans. AwazCDS/Pakistan Development Alliance is now in the process of carrying out a mapping / gap analysis of the CSOs/ private sector engagement in the implementation of SDGs by the national and provincial governments. The mapping will help the team develop a robust advocacy plan for pushing both governments and private sector/ CSOs to join hands together for achieving the commitments made under the 2030 agenda.
Moreover, the project has also conducted a national survey in Pakistan to prioritize the SDGs and interestingly Goal 16 was recommended as the top priority of various stakeholders and governments too. The campaign has also pushed the national Government to join the Voluntary National Review (VNR) process and there is a commitment from the Pakistani leaders to conduct a VNR in 2019.
Who is behind this?
AwazCDS / Pakistan Development Alliance
Parents think you are receiving lessons, you think you are beatboxing (and everyone is right)
Parents think you are in therapy, you think you are beatboxing (and everyone is right)
Take, for example, this problem: Young people in need of speech therapy know that speech therapy is hard. It is a frustrating and difficult process especially when trying to carry over lessons into real speech improvement and eventual independence. Many of the existing teaching methods themselves are in fact, effective, however they are also uninspiring, often failing to intrinsically motivate the student to want to improve him/herself. The students are bored to tears during their speech therapy sessions, but they do it because ultimately it is necessary and it does work.
However, this initiative has a transformative magic program improving this therapy through beatboxing. The changemakers behind the project imagined a tool, a technology, to make speech therapy fun, interactive, and creatively empowering. The impact of this curriculum may disrupt the entire field and positively affect the lives of tens of millions of young people. One student in particular, Diego (7 years old), joined the sessions with several articulation issues, but left with those issues markedly improved. To him, he was just beatboxing. But to his parents and doctors, he had adopted a set of practices that improved his speech. This is a vibrant arts education nonprofit organization that empowers youth and artists by creating solutions to real-world issues through creative self-expression rooted in Hip Hop culture.
The problem that this initiative is solving is a problem of accessibility. In this day and age, there are no boundaries to information. However, making information appealing and engaging is another struggle entirely. Our organization focuses on activities and art forms that youth find inherently fun to solve real world problems. Now, the next challenges of the project are growth, scalability, and sustainability. Specifically, the entrepreneurs are designing a set of online lesson plans and games that use beatboxing, verbal expression, and music as tools for speech therapy. But they are also growing programming that teach nutrition and healthy living through bboying/bgirling. This programming can actually be used to get youth engaged with any of the SDGs. While making art is the core of all of our curricula, the goal can be changed for any program’s specific needs.
Who is behind this?
James Kim
