Guest Blog | Climate Consciousness Artist Kito Mbiango on the Power of Art to Drive Action on Climate Change | The Youth Cafe

Guest Blog | Climate Consciousness Artist Kito Mbiango on the Power of Art to Drive Action on Climate Change | The Youth Cafe

Guest blog by Jill Van den Brule who is a humanitarian and social entrepreneur named 40 over 40 by Forbes. She co-founded a B Corps that makes solar lanterns and helped launch the UN Sustainable Development Goals Advocates. Originally published in the Solutions Journal here.

We have a climate emergency. Regardless of where one stands on this issue – this is our ‘inconvenient truth’. Yet the power to reach people has never been greater. Close to 3.2 Billion people today are online, about 2 Billion are from developing countries and over 89 million from least developed countries.1 Our currency today lies is in our culture, our capacity for mass mobilization and in the immense untapped power of our global neural network. We can literally put our heads and hearts together on this one! Yet, why do the majority seem paralyzed by the daunting challenge of tackling climate change? How do we move humanity beyond the denial and doom? How do we begin making changes in our daily lives to help us all not only thrive but literally survive? We are on the verge of extinction. Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, and the world’s experts warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens our very civilisation

Preparing for SDG HLPF Leaders Dialogue 6 – “The 2020-2030 Vision” | The Youth Cafe

Preparing for SDG HLPF Leaders Dialogue 6 – “The 2020-2030 Vision” | The Youth Cafe

While the SDGs are associated with the period 2016 - 2030, twenty-three targets (14%) have dates for completion before 2030. For twenty of those targets the date is 2020 and for the remaining three it is 2025. The affected targets are associated with 232 individual indicators. Not addressing the issues that arise because of this has the potential to create two classes of targets.

Preparing for the 2019 Heads of State Review of Progress on SDG Implementation | The Youth Cafe

Preparing for the 2019 Heads of State Review of Progress on SDG Implementation | The Youth Cafe

This is published on new SDG Online Taylor & Francis Group, which includes Routledge Publishing, publishes more than 2,500 journals and over 5,000 new books each year, with a books backlist in excess of 120,000 specialist titles. It has great resources and other thought pieces

The 1990s was a decade of UN Conferences and Summits which had resulted in programmes of action on children (1990), environment and development (1992), population and development (1994), social development (1995), women: action for equality, development and peace (1995), food security (1996) and human settlement (1996). By the end of decade, most governments couldn’t deal with the amount of commitments they had made. The idea around the 2000 Millennium Summit was to simplify these various commitments into a concise and achievable series of goals and targets that could be measured and reported on.The Millennium Summit did not agree the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as some people think; these were crafted by the UN in 2001 without governments and stakeholder involvement. There were eight Millennium Development Goals and 18 targets.Progress to delivering those Goals was compromised by the 2008 financial crisis.

Guest Blog | How Much Does the World Spend on Sustainable Development Goals? | The Youth Cafe

Guest Blog | How Much Does the World Spend on Sustainable Development Goals? | The Youth Cafe

Guest blog by Homi Kharas: Interim Vice President and Director - Global Economy and Development and John McArthur: Senior Fellow - Global Economy and Development. Originally published on Brookings Institute website here in their Future Development section.

In a forthcoming paper, we zoom out on the global SDG financing landscape in order to zoom back in on country-specific contexts and gaps. In particular, we consider how much the world’s governments are already spending on SDG-related issues every year, how spending varies across income levels, and how the spending patterns link to country-by-country estimates of needs. We focus on the public sector due to its lead responsibility for tackling both the public goods and the “no one left behind” issues embedded in the SDGs and the 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda on financing for development, the latter including a “social compact” commitment to provide universal access to basic services. This research can be considered as complementary to assessments of where the private sector can best contribute to SDG financing. Below we summarize some preliminary findings, noting that all results are subject to refinement as we complete the analysis.

Just Launched | The Taylor and Francis Sustainable Development Goals Online Collection of Materials | The Youth Cafe

Just Launched | The Taylor and Francis Sustainable Development Goals Online Collection of Materials | The Youth Cafe

Sustainable Development Goals Online (SDGO) is an interdisciplinary collection of digital content, including Taylor & Francis’ books and journals across all disciplines, themed around the SDGs. SDGO includes more than 12,000 carefully selected articles and chapters in an online library covering the 17 SDGs, plus teaching and learning materials including presentations, videos, case studies, teaching guides, and lesson plans. The collection was created in partnership with United Nations agencies including the Principles for Responsible Management Education, PRME, and guided by an international Advisory Board of academics, practitioners, policy-makers, and officers in third sector, government, and NGOs.

Remarks By AU Youth Envoy To The United Nations Security Council | The Youth Cafe

Remarks By AU Youth Envoy To The United Nations Security Council | The Youth Cafe

I thank you for the opportunity to brief the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on this important theme on peace and security in Africa particularly to inform on contributions of African youth and strategies to mobilize the UN family towards silencing the guns in Africa. I would like to express my gratitude to the Republic of South Africa for this invitation and for your leadership on the youth agenda. 

What Do Young People Think About Social Media’s Role in Politics? Insights from the Common Futures Conversations Survey | The Youth Cafe

What Do Young People Think About Social Media’s Role in Politics? Insights from the Common Futures Conversations Survey | The Youth Cafe

This post is part of a series reflecting on the results of the Common Futures Conversations survey of 3,487 young people from 13 countries across Africa and Europe. We asked young people a range of questions about the how they engage with news and political discussions online. When asked to select the social channels they thought to be reliable sources of information and news.

Do Young People from Africa and Europe Have Different Political Priorities? | Insights from the Common Futures Conversations Survey | The Youth Cafe

Do Young People from Africa and Europe Have Different Political Priorities? | Insights from the Common Futures Conversations Survey | The Youth Cafe

This post is part of a series reflecting on the results of the Common Futures Conversations survey of 3,487 young people from 13 countries across Africa and Europe. We asked three of the young people involved in helping develop the survey to reflect on what they perceived as the main similarities and differences between the responses of African and European respondents to the survey.