The Global Goals – The need to change

The world isn’t perfect in any way. There are so many things that are brilliant about it, whether they are natural or man-made, but there are a lot of terrible things going on too. People sleep in the streets whilst others go home to houses bigger then they need. There isn’t snow on mountains where there has been in past years. Millions of children around the globe don’t have access to an education and some are even stopped from going to school because of their gender. And issues such as these aren’t going to improve in any way if nothing is done about them.

On the bright side – the Global Goals

The good news is these problems are being noticed, not just by nature activists or scientists or the people being affected by these issues, but by governments all around the world. In fact, the United Nations (the UN – a large organisation of which 193 countries around the globe are members) picked the 17 most important problems and aim to tackle them by 2030. These 17 prioritised issues are now called the ‘Global Goals for Sustainable Development’, or just the Global Goals for short, because that’s exactly what they are – goals to ensure the world continues to develop in a sustainable way.

Now, these Global Goals may have been developed by the UN and agreed by world leaders but they need everyone to help – including you. There are 3 main things they suggest you do to help and here they are, briefly explained and with a few extra resources you may like to check out:

1. Spread the word about the goals

It’s so important that lots of people know about the goals. Not only will it urge the world leaders to stick to their promises, the more people campaigning to solve these problems, the better. The Global Goals have a website, a twitter account and Facebook page that you could view or use for inspiration, as well as an upbeat music video and recorded message from Steven Hawking.

2. Familiarise yourself with the goals

Get to know the goals well and have a think about how they could relate to you. They’re all really important but stand for different things. There is a really cool booklet that goes through each goal and tells stories about people who are affected by goals. And it’s aimed at us kids, so is worth checking out!

3. Third and most importantly, do something!

Take action about the goals that you feel you can do something about or you feel matter to you. This can be on a small scale, like buying a fair-trade Easter Egg or donating food to a food bank, or on a bigger scale, like doing a sponsored event in aid of a goal. Have a brain-storm with your parents about what you can do as a family as well. It doesn’t matter what you do, just do something. Don’t wait for others to make a change.

No excuses

So, there you go. You have the inspiration, the reason and the content so now it’s up to you. Make sure you know about the goals in detail and have a good understanding of them. Tell you teachers, friends, neighbours about them. But, most importantly, get out there and start your own campaign against one of the issues the goals are tackling and make a difference.

Amy