SDGeneration Network: A Youth Led Platform
SDGeneration Network
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Non-governmental organization (NGO)
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#SDGAction33771
Description
SDGeneration is a youth-led initiative, which started out of curiosity and passion to make a difference amongst the members of our youth community. Prior to our experience as members of the youth delegation, we discovered that our youth were unaware of the SDGs and the 2030 agenda. The initiative began with a youth-centred approach by using social media as the main platform. In the last few years, we were able to connect with different youth groups through various conferences, workshops, and social media campaigns. Furthermore, as founders of SDGeneration, we strive to educate and empower the youth to make a positive change amongst their social circles which inspires to develop to benefit the entire community. SDGeneration serves as a platform for youth to be innovative and creative with their roles in helping achieve the 2030 Agenda.
At first, SDGeneration was simply an online social media platform solely depending on the power of the youth, over time it developed into a community platform that was evidently present within community events, activities that were hosted in partnership with numerous groups all over the State of Qatar as well as corporations such as Education Above All and Qatar Foundation. The way in which the projects were implemented was by connecting the vision of these corporations to the 2030 Agenda, through this strategy we were able to deliver clear messages and provide a platform for the youth to progress towards the Agenda. Before hosting any events we ensured our vision and our plan of action aligned with our vision with the activity and its outcomes. At the end of each event, we asked the attendees to provide us with feedback; this was a crucial element as it helped us reflect and make necessary changes for future events. We also ensured the attendees were able to leave with leaflets and resources to ensure they continue to be involved.
SDGeneration Network has collaborated with regional and international entities through programs that contribute towards the SDGs, such entities include Qatar Foundation International, Education Above All Foundation, Greener Future, Earthna & The Ministry of Environment, and Climate Change in Qatar. SDGeneration hopes to branch out and establish more partnerships with youth-led and SDG Focused platforms to enhance the message of the Sustainable Development Goals and advocate for solutions that contribute towards the 17 Goals.
Being the only active youth-led initiative in the Gulf we have grown amongst many communities in the region, our presence at mainstream events in the country have been crucial to delivering the message of the 2030 Agenda to the youth as well as educating a large proportion of society on the importance of their roles on the path to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, the way our practice broke new ground was by utilizing the power of social media and connecting modern life events to the SDGs these messages were easily conveyable to the youth and as a result had a great response. Many challenges faced us as this was a new message to spread amongst the youth in the region but we managed to find solutions to successfully deliver the message.
Over the years, the initiative participated in several workshops, social media campaigns, and conferences. The several participations highlight the partnership aspect of our work. Furthermore, the events include; Qatar leadership conference, the SDGs in the library workshop with Qatar National Library. We took this opportunity to invest in ourselves as well as our fellow youth initiatives, we hosted a couple of webinars with the Greener initiative to whom are a very active youth environmental initiative in Qatar.
Our plans to further sustain the outcomes of our initiative is to work on establishing a recognized group of youth that would represent our values and advocate for what we stand for, as for replication we have been active with local cafes to join the action in reducing the use of plastic straws a simple initiative that has inspired many food establishments to join the movement, aside from this movement there’s also the active climate action campaign that focused on cleaning public parks and beaches. These simple practices can be replicated anywhere by simply raising awareness about the impact of such small changes.
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COVID-19 has affected the practical aspect of our initiative, as this year we hoped to expand to physical activities including climate marches and beach cleanups to which we had pre-planned, but due to the unprecedented circumstances, it was tough to carry them out. Although the pandemic hit us all differently, we chose to look at the bright side and advocate how the environment had a positive impact due to the minimal human interaction with nature since the beginning of the pandemic, we instilled hope to our fellow youth community that many practices can be carried out to achieve the SDGs amid the pandemic by introducing easy solutions such as replacing plastic straws with a reusable straw. We also took this as an opportunity to provide more webinars for the youth to invite them to learn about what they can do to contribute during the lockdown, this worked as an advantage as we were able to reach out to more youth.
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SDGeneration is a non-profit youth-led initiative, the partnerships formed within the community include Qatar Foundation, Education Above All Foundation, Qatar National Library as well as the UN Office in Doha, as for engagements made by the initiative those include events such as the UN Social Forum in Geneva, The UN General Assembly and SDG Zone in New York City.
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Oweis Al-Salahi , Founder