Created by Amsterdam Impact
In 2015 the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted with a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030. The goals are still relatively unknown to the wider public. The city of Amsterdam is looking for initiatives to raise awareness and translate them into action at the local level.
At the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in 2015 world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030. In the Netherlands, a growing societal movement of companies, NGOs, knowledge institutes, municipalities, civil society networks and government have committed themselves to contribute to the SDGs, individually or jointly, by signing the SDG Charter.
More and more initiatives and entrepreneurs are active in pursuing the SDG’s both at a local and international level. They also often use it for their strategy, reporting and measuring their impact.
Corporates are starting to embrace the SDGs in their reporting, prioritize involvement in the SDGs and translate it into actions.
The city of Amsterdam is looking for social innovators that can help raise awareness of the SDGs among local actors and translate the global goals into local actions. The city values initiatives that focus on raising awareness of the SDGs as a whole or about specific SDGs and welcomes initiatives that focus on different neighborhoods and/or amongst different groups in the city in awareness activities.
What if everyone in Amsterdam knew about the SDGs?
The challenge is focused on the city of Amsterdam and the greater metropolitan area.
The SDGs are of local and international importance. Locally the city of Amsterdam sees actors that work on specific SDGs as important partners to tackle urban challenges. But local actions and actors in Amsterdam are also of international importance. Through the products and services that people and businesses buy for example they can have an impact on sustainable development elsewhere.
The target group is local citizens, especially those who might be unaware of the SDGs. This means that a solution needs to consider the diversity of the Amsterdam demographic and may choose to target a specific population segment or several.
The city works for the benefit of public society and as a Challenge Owner would like to use this opportunity to reach out to the wider public to share in creating solutions for its own citizen base.
The city of Amsterdam is preparing an SDG initiative and is currently mapping the initiatives that are already taking place to reach certain SDG’s. Efforts are linked to an event in September where local, national and international guests will come together to exchange ideas around the SDGs. This presents a possible opportunity for a Solution Provider to this Challenge to be profiled and/or reach a broader audience. The city of Amsterdam can build on networks, in setting up a local human rights agenda, activities around a Fairtrade city and Millennium Goals city. Also Amsterdam will build on its existing policy and actions of Amsterdam Impact, the Action Programme on Social Entrepreneurship, that introduced impact and social entrepreneurship as part of the cities’ economic agenda, and in which we are engaging in issue-based activities with citizens to improve the city.
The city of Amsterdam is keen to exchange ideas and perspectives from different actors and different parts of the city. The city is specifically interested in initiatives that focus on diversity and inclusion, that make use of technology as an example to reach a bigger audience, link actors that are less likely to work together on the global goals and/or that have an innovative business model.
The solution we are looking for should:
The city of Amsterdam will facilitate exchange sessions and will coordinate initiatives with each other and with potential partners from the city’s network
The city of Amsterdam will invite initiatives to participate in SDG events and activities of the city of Amsterdam and its partners
If desired the city of Amsterdam will participate in activities of initiatives that help to raise awareness of the SDGs.
In the case an initiative is successful in securing a Social Challenges Innovation Platform grant the city of Amsterdam will promote the initiative through its marketing and communication channels, will liaise with desired partners and will give the initiative the opportunity to present itself at the SDG summit in September 2018.
The city of Amsterdam is preparing activities around the SDGs for the next coming years. Lessons learned from initiatives that are financed with a Social Challenges Innovation Platform grant will be shared within the city and to cities around the globe through Global Goals cities networks.
