Community Ownership & Local Implementation of the SDGs - A Training for Multipliers is designed to build capacity of facilitators and multipliers of the vitally important conversation about how to implement the 17 SDGs and its 169 targets at the local and regional scale in ways that are carefully adapted
to the bio-cultural uniqueness of each location. This question-centred training is designed to engage local communities in a process that will turn what might be perceived as top-down goals of the United Nations into meaningful projects that are locally relevant and collaboratively implemented by the communities themselves.
The ‘SDG Community Implementation Flash Cards’ contain more than 200 questions structured into the four dimensions of Gaia Education’s whole systems approach to sustainability (social, ecological, economic and worldview). Participants will explore these four dimensions of each of the 17 SDGs in question-focused small group conversations inviting them to collaboratively identify actions and solutions aimed at implementing the global goals in ways that are relevant to their lives and their communities. This is an effective way of creating local community ownership of the SDGs.
Achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development - one community at a time - requires us to facilitate widespread culturally creative conversations that can lead to behavioural change by enabling people on the ground to co-create solutions in tune with local ecosystems and culture. By joining this training of multipliers you will have a change to take part in such conversations and learn an easily replicable process to facilitate more if these conversations yourself in the future.
Sustainability is not an end point in a journey. It is a community centred process of learning how to live sustainably and regeneratively in a particular locality with its ecological and cultural uniqueness. Everyone in that place can take the leadership to start or participate in culturally creative conversations about how to collaboratively create specific projects aimed at implementing priority SDGs in their community. If you want to take part in or facilitate such conversations where you live, this course is for you.
This training is an opportunity to become an active participant in your community’s future, whether you work in the private or public sector or for a civil society organisation, as a community organiser, teacher, social entrepreneur, concerned parent, pensioner, recent school leaver or university graduate. You can simply take part to engage with others in your community to explore the best opportunities to make a positive difference in collaboration with others. Or, you can take part with the intention of becoming a multiplier of such conversations and learn how to use the ‘SDG Community Implementation Flashcards’ and the detailed workshop script to facilitate such conversations and initiate such projects around your community. If you are a teacher, academic, civil servant, or consultant - for example - taking part in the training might contribute positively to your professional practise.
The day-long ‘Achieving the Global Goals - One Community at a Time’ training for multipliers serves a dual purpose:
1) Initiating community focused conversations about local SDG implementation
The highly interactive process invites participants to engage in constructive conversations about the local relevance of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - based on a set of flashcards designed to help structure small group dialogues. Through these conversations participants will:
2) Training people to become multipliers of such conversations
Achieving the Global Goals by 2030 requires initiating these kinds of processes in communities everywhere, and we are all called to become multipliers of SDG-focused conversations about the sustainable future of our community.
The ‘SDG Community Implementation Flashcards’ in combination with the workshop script and the experience of having taken part in the day-long training, will turn most participants into potential multipliers of such community conversations. Participants will be given a brief introduction on how to use the script and the flashcards to replicate the training with their team at work, with local community groups and civil servants, and for students and staff at their local university or schools. Participants will leave the training equipped with the tools and the experience to help others to reflect on why and how the global goals are relevant to their community or business, and what first steps can be taken locally to contribute to achieving humanity’s global goals by 2030.
