It all starts with education. And from there, people can demand action from their political leaders.

This initiative under the Great Lakes Peace Center seeks to address the problem of marginalized groups of people both in school and out of school and those groups of people who have low levels of education or not educated at all. The objective is to support them so they are able to understand the Global Goals in their own languages and be able to advocate for themselves to have more local government plans aligned to Agenda 2030. The changemakers behind this project noticed that in their community (Rwenzori region, Western Uganda) there had not been such efforts before because people including local government leaders had limited or no knowledge of the SDGs.

The initiative has created awareness of the goals and their indicators, and raised numerous discussions on what is being done to align the local development plans to the global vision. Through the involvement of Youth Councils, people demanded action in communities, especially for the goals on gender equality, climate action, quality education and peace and justice. That has led to tremendous and commendable work by local authorities to include these particular goals in planning so far. Musoki Evelyn, a child mother that had dropped out from school, was brought on board among hundreds of other young girls and boys during an activity they carried out in collaboration with the Gender and Community development department of their Municipality, during a 16 days campaign of activism against gender-based violence in December 2017.

The initiative will continue to build dialogue at local levels to involve as many young people as possible as they form a big electoral majority. This will bring in a new breed of leaders that are able to address development at global trends. Schools are to be used to build a knowledge base and generate discussions at inter school level presided over by local leaders to be able to influence their decisions pertaining to the goals. This shall eventually involve the sub national government level as plans will be moving upwards for possible funding from national level.

Who is behind this?

The Great Lakes Peace Center

For more information:

Visit www.greatlakespeace.org