The Youth SDG Summit

By Gemma Tabet

Written: March 20, 2021

Theme of Issue: SDG 15, Life on Land. Here is the official UN link where you can learn more about this particular Sustainable Development Goal: https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal15

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On the 11th and 12th of February 2021, I attended the Youth SDG Summit. The Youth SDG Summit is the world’s very first summit hosted 100% by young people. The Summit was an opportunity for youth around the world, from the rolling hills of Uganda to the colourful spices of India, to come together, learn and act. Over 200 young people connected on the Youth SDG Summit, which meant managing multiple time zones! One boy in Indonesia told us that he was starting the Summit at 3 A.M. Many others were working throughout the night or during the entire day, but each one of us dedicated to making the event a success.

During the two days, multiple sessions were held every hour. Each session was very different, some were more about listening to guest speakers and leaders, while others were more collaborative and interactive. The sessions were incredibly diverse, ranging from topics about the importance of kindness to ways to deal with youth homelessness. They were all very fascinating, and many global youth leaders, innovators and changemakers were invited to speak to us about their experiences. Below are three of my favourite sessions:

1. The Making the SDGs Famous session was very interactive, led by an American teacher (Guy Hamlin) who spoke about his experience in teaching his students about the SDGs. He and his class have created many different projects to raise awareness on the SDGs on a global and local scale. They made a short iMovie that runs during the ad interval in their local cinema, they ordered the United Nations SDG poster and shared it, so far, to schools in 60 different countries, and much more. The teacher really wanted to interact with the participants, allowing everybody to pitch in ideas on how to make the SDGs more known. We made a padlet and I talked about IST’s (my school) student-led newspaper and our SDG Club.

2. The In an ideal world, what would quality education look like? session was less interactive, where only certain guest speakers talked about their experiences, projects and roles in quality education. Some of the speakers there were Harrison Green (a Youth Mentor and Advisor for Useful & Kind Unlimited, who works with young people to promote prosocial leadership and action), Mary McEvoy (a teacher and youth project leader who finished her Master’s in Human Rights and Conflict Management in Italy), Santha Nair (a primary school English teacher who is committed to working in a palm oil estate school in Malaysia) and Nurie Fatema (an educator working on her project WAKE UP LADIES on women empowerment and gender inequality). They all had very interesting experiences within education and all had firm beliefs about what our educational systems should look like in the future. This was more of a listening session, as the speakers presented and discussed their ideas, but you could also write your comments and questions which were answered and used for further debate by the speakers.

3. Finally, the Young people rising: a power poetry workshop session was more focused on the individual, starting with a brief introduction of the Heal Her Collective project, which aims to heal trauma, especially focused on women’s experiences, with storytelling, expressive arts and community rituals. After, we had many activities to complete: haikus, acrostic poems, meditation and free-writing. I wrote a haiku inspired by the summit, and another participant asked if they could use it on their Instagram page (giving me credit of course) because they really liked the message (seen in photo below). The session was overall very relaxing and calm, a nice break from the Summit to focus on well-being.

It’s easy to forget when we’re flooded by negative news and devastating statistics about our future, that there are so many people out there who care. There are people around the world who are inventing innovative systems and products, creating projects and organizations and raising awareness in local and global communities, all to create a better world. I believe our news should spend a little more on the small things, on the people who are fighting for sustainability and equality, on the people who give us hope and who act upon it. The Youth SDG Summit was created for this very reason, to show hope, unity and solidarity across the globe. It was especially focused on the youth, because we are the most passionate, the boldest and the most willing to push and fight for a better world. It was so inspiring to see how young people, those often deemed immature and naïve, have managed to find novel solutions to issues that governments don’t want to deal with. I remember one of the key messages of the Youth SDG Summit was that if governments, companies and organizations don’t want to invite us to their roundtables then fine. We’ll just create our own.