UN SDG Action Campaign

Press release and photos by The Afrolatin@ Project, courtesy of Amilcar Priestley, Director.

Friday, July 25^th, 2014 – Today which marks the Día de la Mujer Afro (Afrodescendant Women’s Day), the Afrolatin@ Project is pleased to announce the launch of “CONTAMOS AFRO 2015”, our regional partnership with the United Nations MY World 2015/ World We Want 2015/ Beijing +20 (www.myworld2015.org) campaign.

Between today and December 31, 2014, the CONTAMOS AFRO 2015 initiative will be collecting and facilitating the collection of MY World ballots, using the voting widget embedded at www.afrolatinoproject.org, or via the MY World 2015 app for Android phones, text (SMS) message, the WhatsApp mobile app, email or paper ballot. The MY World campaign uses an innovative set of open source tools to empower global citizens to vote on the post-2015 sustainable development goals, by anonymously selecting 6 out of 16 possible issues of importance to them and their communities. People who want to elaborate on their choices can also record an audio message via our website, WhatsApp, Skype or video message via Youtube.

At the conclusion of the campaign, the information will be given to United Nations member-states to consider in setting national policy. The data will also be accessible and useful for the public as well as activists, journalists and educators. Here is a sample of the data we have collected as part of our soft launch: http://data.myworld2015.org/?partner=AFROLA

Given, 1) the end of the period to achieve the Millennium Development Goals established in 2000, 2) the 20^th anniversary of the last U.N. International Women’s conference held in Beijing, China and 3) the start of the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024), the MY World 2015 campaign and platform is timely.

Continue reading “The Afrolatin@ Project announces regional partnership with UN MY World 2015 campaign”

This post was compiled and edited based on original blog and facebook entries by Yuwalaya and co-founder, Mr. Sanjog Thakuri, who has been actively involved in collecting the voices of children, adolescents and youth in the post-2015 development agenda process and in supporting the My World initiative in Nepal.

The UN in Nepal has teamed up with Yuwalaya, a youth led NGO that has been organizing advocacy events on the post-2015 agenda at various schools and universities in Kathmandu as well as working with volunteers to collect offline ballots throughout Nepal. To support the MY World Global Week of Action 5-11 May, Yuwalaya organized several student workshops.

According to Nepal’s 2011 Census, there are roughly 9.2 million children aged 0-14 who make up 35% of the total population, and 7.36 million youth aged 15-29 who are 27.82% of the total population. When the Global Week of Action began, there were roughly 13,000 votes from Nepal on the MY World Survey. Yuwalaya and the youth organizations they worked with have set the goal of reaching a total of 20,000 votes in Nepal.

To support the Global Week of Action, Yuwalaya organized three workshops in participation with colleges and youth organizations. In each session, Mr. Thakuri began by explaining the Millennium Development Goals and presenting the various ways that youth can participate and get involved in the development of the future post-2015 agendas, including via the MY World Global Week of Action. He stressed the importance of youth having a voice in global issues, especially since many were not aware of the impact the global development agenda will have on their lives. He shared the present statistics and priorities of people from Nepal based on My World data. The youth and adolescent participants agreed to mobilize their communities to collect more votes.

During the first session on 5 May, 34 youths studying their first and second years of Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) at Classic College participated in the orientation. The school distributed 1500 ballots to further more vote collection. Continue reading “Yuwalaya and UN Nepal unite to increase votes”