The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) were created and adopted by all UN Member States in 2015 as part of a 15-year plan to end poverty, protect the planet, and improve the lives and prospects of all persons.  Although there has been incredible progress over the last 5 years, the speed and scale is not enough to meet those goals by 2030.

World leaders are now calling for a “Decade of Action” and have pledged to dedicate more resources to achieving these goals, leaving no person behind. The U.N. Secretary General has called for increased action on three levels; Global Action, Local Action, and People Action.

#TheSDGVizProject focuses on the third level of action; People Action.  Our goal is use social media and data visualization to:

  • raise awareness and promote the Sustainable Development Goals;
  • measure and report on progress towards the SDG’s;
  • provide insight into quality of life inequities around the globe; and
  • provide opportunities for our community to contribute locally towards meeting the global goals

 

The Goals

Altogether there are 17 interconnected goals, each with comprehensive policies, action plans, and indicators to measure progress.

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300

The Project

For the next year and half, each month, the 3 of us (Vinodh, Jacqui, and Brian), will be leveraging data from the World Health Organization to build data visualizations focusing on one of the 17 goals.  We will also be sharing this data with the community, so you can join us on our SDG journey.

Start of the month – We will share a post with information on that month’s goal, as well as a link to the data on data.world

Middle of the month – We will share our vizzes and highlight any submissions from the community

End of the month – We will share a post with information on the progress towards that goal, ways that we can all contribute locally, and a collection of all of the submissions for that month.

Participating in the #TheSDGVizProject

Although we would love to have as much participation from the community as possible, we understand that there are a lot of great monthly challenges out there, and only so much time.  The three of us have committed to building vizzes each month, but there are a lot of ways that you can participate in our project.

  • Help Spread the Word – Our main goal is to spread awareness, so if you see a viz with the #TheSDGVizProject, please share it
  • Take Action – Read our monthly blog for ways to contribute locally towards the global goals
  • Submit Your Vizzes
    • Follow us on Twitter and connect on LinkedIn
      1. Vinodh Kumar (@VinodhDataArt)
      2. Jacqui Moore (@jaxx084)
      3. Brian Moore (@bmoorewastaken)
    • Download the data from data.world (links will be sent out each month)
    • Build your visualizations
    • Share your visualizations on Twitter and LinkedIn with the hashtag #TheSDGVizProject and tag the 3 of us
    • Enter your viz into TheSDGVizProject Submission Tracker

Acknowledgements

In September 2019, #makeovermonday helped to promote the Sustainable Development Goals through one of their weekly projects, and was a source of inspiration for this project.  For more information on #makeovermonday check out their web site here