United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals are a call for action by all countries – poor, rich and middle-income – to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. They recognize that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with strategies that build economic growth and address a range of social needs including education, health, social protection, and job opportunities, while tackling climate change and environmental protection. More important than ever, the goals provide a critical framework for COVID-19 recovery.

COVIDxNOW together with the Empowering a Billion Women Foundation contributes to every single one of them. Whether it’s through our work with women-owned businesses or our laser focus on improving health, or the efforts of our community members to reduce poverty and provide services to the underserved. Our community is generating positive global impact through our connections and the members’ efforts, thought leadership, and ideas.

Here is an example of where our community is focused with respect to the SDGs:

Margo LaZaro

Co-Founder and CSO, UN SDG Impact Awards and President and Chair of NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY

Margo is connecting individuals, enterprises, and NGOs with the SDGs. The SDG Impact Awards has built a community of leaders from around the world, who are doing work related to the SDGs. The Impact Awards initiative enables leaders to highlight their work, build supportive networks, and find mentors. Anyone can sign up at SDGimpactawards.org. It is working alongside the UN to amplify the SDGs and the work of leaders around the world.

Ruben Vellenga

External Relations and Private Sector Partnership with UNFPA and a Specialist with the SDG Partnership Platform

Based in Nairobi, Kenya, Ruben is responsible for partnerships and external relations for UNFPA in the region. He discusses the efforts to transform the work that they are doing through the UN in the time of COVID-19. He also discusses the difficulties in the tradeoffs in the focus of efforts regarding health interventions. For instance, do you focus on COVID-19 prevention and care and tradeoff access to reproductive health or other preventive and critical care needs.

Mark Sadovnick

Partner and Chief Human Element Officer, 5th Element Group

5th Element is supporting innovation and leadership related to the SDGs in all of their work. One initiative Mark is spearheading is a video series, “Leaders Who Care, ”through which he his highlighting the amazing work of leaders from all sectors working toward positive social impact. He discusses how SDG 5 – Gender Equality – uplifts all countries and communities. ‘s When women are empowered communities thrive.

Neil Ghosh

President & CEO – SOS Children’s Villages USA

SOS Children’s Villages work with orphans and disadvantaged youth around the world with 40,000 youth in their villages and programs. SOS is working with these youth to provide safe living environments, general support, as well as providing education and preparing them for the workforce of the future. Neil talks about the important work of supporting youth and the unique methods that SOS applies to these efforts. He also talks about the unique internal approaches that SOS as a global organization is employing to adjust to COVID-19 and implement new structures such as cross-country resource sharing based on needs.