Count your blessings; Name them in tens, hundreds, and thousands — The Sustainability Perspective
By Uche Nwosu, social innovator
One of late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s quotes in referring to humanity and largely dependent on each other is that: ‘‘we (humans) are caught in an inescapable network, tied by a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.’’
The United Nations was intentional enough to summarise the Global Goals popularly known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) it set in 2015 as a worldwide call to specifically tackle several community problems ranging from poverty to lack of peace, justice, and strong institutions, in Goal 17 — partnership for the goals.
From a subjective view, Goal 17 seems the most underrated when it should be dominating over the others. The reason is not far-fetched because, if the idea of promoting overall development is to be truly identified, then the core of the message should be in the measurable collective efforts.
As an enthusiast and an active advocate, I heard of the SDGs for the first time in 2018 while at a summit by SocialGood Lagos — a Goal 17 focused youth-led organization that I later joined as a volunteer. Being present at the event was an eye-opener as it provided the clarity needed to help me advance my career. Also, at the time, I was working with Teach For Nigeria — a Goal 4-concentrated (Quality Education) non-governmental organization forming as a movement of young leaders who are initially deployed to serve in rural communities as teachers through a two-year intensive fellowship program from where they transition to become part of the alumni body amplifying their efforts in advocating change in the education ecosystem in Nigeria.
Consequently, my actions therefrom became deliberate towards making sure that I find a way to fit my advocacy work into a ‘sustainability’ frame and to continue this interest because I was desirous of completing a master’s degree program, my preferred course of study was Globalisation, Business, and Development at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom. Choosing that particular course was inspired by the notion that for several actors listed as international organizations, private, and public enterprises respectively, there is a need to learn how these can collaborate to bring about development (achievement of the SDGs) in nations.
Arguably, with my experiences I have come to learn that sustainable development rests on two themes: innovation and sustainability, as while the former is about creating solutions, the other is on ensuring that these innovations have ripple effects as impacts over the long term.
Arguably, with my experiences I have come to learn that sustainable development rests on two themes: innovation and sustainability, as while the former is about creating solutions, the other is on ensuring that these innovations have ripple effects as impacts over the long term.
Hence, as one of the Research & Advocacy officers for SocialGood Lagos, I contributed to drafting the contents used to drive discussions in one of the plenary sessions titled: ‘Building the Future: The Bottom of the Pyramid and Driving Development,’ at its 2019 annual summit that engaged over 100 people made up of government officials, international body representatives, youth and student advocates, and civil society organizations. My interest in the topic was due to my passion and work in rural community development.
During the course of my two-year fellowship with Teach for Nigeria from 2018, I was involved in several innovations which included that I: set up a free 5-week first-of-its-kind summer holiday lessons in a public school for thirty-six students which had at least one-time contact success of 36%; took fifteen students on local, state, and international educational tours; helped them access over 100 dollars worth of educational materials through third party donations; and finally, collaborated with a colleague to set up a sickbay that serves more than 500 public primary school children and indirectly benefits over 1,000 community members (made up of parents and teachers) through a grant of 230 dollars received from an awarding organization, Peace First.
In my little space, I see an impact, however, on a large scale, I wonder if this is felt given the strength of the challenges almost overpower the solutions. Likewise, I know young people in other places who make social change efforts across Nigeria, yet, nobody or no organization crowd-collects these.
After spending one year on the fellowship with Teach for Nigeria, it occurred to me that a closer challenge is on assessing the impacts of ongoing efforts against the whole problem.
Admittedly, it can be somewhat discouraging to know that in Teach for Nigeria’s existence for three years, it had affected only less than 20,000 children out of over 10 million who are out of school which has now increased to over 13 million or the 60% who are in school, but not actively learning for several reasons especially due to poor teacher quality.
Obviously, it will be impossible to achieve Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals with this number by 2030, nevertheless, I began to ponder about other organizations that were concentrated on the same goal, the lack of data to merge their impressions as a whole. The number of impacts by similar organizations like Slum2School Africa, Street to School Initiative, OneAfricanChild Foundation, Oando Foundation, Aid for Rural Education Access Initiative (AREAi), EduAid TCN, etc and those outside this sector (non-government) can be accumulated and interpretations are made from these efforts.
Therefore, this has majorly inspired my reformed interest to learn the use of data science (the knowledge of big data) to ensure sustainability and changed my decision to study MSc Sustainable Development instead.
Feng Ye validates this intent of mine in a positive light when in a blog post shared on The Borgen Project, stated Data Deprivation as one of the three challenges of achieving the SDGs — Sustainable Development Goals.
From when I finished my fellowship in July 2020, I sought organizations working fully on sustainability, and thought of it as a vague field having searched for long until I attended the ‘Sustainable Conversations: Thought Leadership on Sustainable Development’ webinar organized by Thistle Praxis Consulting — a Nigerian management consulting firm with one of its core areas on sustainability. Progressively, the experience broadened my horizon and helped me to connect with other sustainability professionals in Nigeria. Later, I got to learn of international networks like Net Impact, Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), and even most recently, Nelis (Next Leaders Initiative for Sustainability) Global. Although the field seems complex and quite new, I have improved confidence with the professional support in these already existing structures that makes navigating it, easy.
A parable of the talents (money) tells of three servants in the Christian Bible, two of whom were able to double theirs in return to their master, however, this was not the case with the other who could not see the exponential power of his resulting in its loss. If we do not count our blessings, we may lose them all.
Reference
https://borgenproject.org/three-challenges-of-the-sustainable-development-goals/