SEGOVIA – On Thursday night, November 7th, the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Club held their launch event at the popular bar, El Saxo.
The evening was filled with excitement and interest as potential members filled the small bar. Shortly after everyone had ordered their drinks and begun to settle in, the club leadership – a group of ambitious and passionate first-year BIR students led by their President, Dawson Shinners, introduced themselves and their plans for the school year through a brief publicly-accessible presentation they had attendees watch on their phones. As Shinners explained, the club primarily hopes to achieve two major goals this year: first, they wish to raise awareness for the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, and second, they wish to conduct a development project in a foreign country (not yet selected)
The SDGs consist of 17 objectives given the highest priority by the UN for its 2030 Agenda, based on the principle of “leaving no one behind.” According to the new SDG Club, they can be compartmentalized into the 5 P’s according to their area of concern: People (1-6), Prosperity (7-10), Planet (11-15), Peace (16), and Partnership (17). Through this breakdown, the club hopes to organize potential member by their respective interests and create new projects for each type of overarching goal.
The SDG wasted no time in doing so either. As part of the presentation, attendees were immediately asked to fill in an extremely short survey about their passions by clicking on a link in the presentation. They were then asked to complete another voluntary survey of any preliminary ideas anyone had for the club. Despite some hiccups and poor signals, the surveys were completed without much of a hitch.
Those new projects and their inspirations would be accessible on a public google drive folder, Shinners stated. And already it seems to have taken off. At the time of this article’s writing, there looks to be just under 10 submissions added to the public folder. That’s not even to mention the SDG Club’s weekend planned clean-up project or their upcoming guest UN Speaker.
With that, the presentation ended, and students returned to socializing over the SDGs. Overall then, the night should be considered a huge success for the new club by this reporter – a warm and welcoming event, a highly productive and engaging presentation, and more events already underway. If there is a club to look out for this school year, it would certainly be the Sustainable Development Goals Club.
