The UN 2030 Goals and Their Call For Action

What is known today as the 2030 UN Goals were first proposed by Colombia in 2011 in a preparation event for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), also known as Rio+20. On the actual event of Rio+20, the idea was picked up, and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and its targets were presented.

An Open Working Group was established to define its working methods and executability. In 2015, the 193 member states of the UN agreed on a resolution for the 17 UN Goals for 2030, and later, in 2017, a list of targets and indicators were published.

That is how the popular SGD Goals came about.

What is more important than how they came to exist, is how they are going to be achieved. As the name indicates, most goals are to be accomplished by 2030, more specifically between 2020 and 2030. However, some goals have no end date. In order to track the progress of each goal, https://sdg-tracker.org/ was created, a website that shares data regarding the goals in a transparent and widely available format. Similarly, the Global "SDG Index and Dashboards Report" is an annual publication that tracks countries' performance on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals, highlighting the key challenges that each country faces when implementing them.

The 17 SDGs are:

1. No Poverty

2. Zero Hunger

3. Good Health and Well-being

4. Quality Education

5. Gender Equality

6. Clean Water and Sanitation

7. Affordable and Clean Energy

8. Decent Work and Economic Growth

9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

10. Reducing Inequality

11. Sustainable Cities and Communities

12. Responsible Consumption and Production

13. Climate Action

14. Life Below Water

15. Life On Land

16. Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

17. Partnerships for the Goals

Each SGD typically has 8 to 12 targets, and each target has between 1 and 4 indicators to measure their progress.

The UN goals are unprecedented because they are a call for action by all countries – developed and developing – in a global partnership. Furthermore, they promote multidisciplinarity between the economic, socio-political and environmental sectors. The implementation must be executed worldwide, through governments and private partners. Moreover, we, citizens of the world, should also be engaged too. In order to create awareness, the SGD Goals need to be represented by advocates, events and webinars, all in place to make them more accessible and known among the general public.

As a social innovation club, DANSIC is committed to spread information regarding the UN goals. We partnered up with Go Impact in order to help spread the message. Go Impact is a mobile app that releases simple, actionable tasks related to the 2030 UN Goals, and inspires individuals to take action and contribute to achieving the 2030 targets. You can check them out here, and help us spread the message. Talk to your friends, demand your leaders to take action and make small changes in your own lifestyle as well. We believe that together we can achieve the UN goals by 2030.

Get an insight into DANSIC

How we hire and engage with our team members

If you are familiar with our organisation, you know that here at DANSIC, we care about social innovation and sustainability, and while we are striving to make a positive impact in those areas, DANSIC is so much more than that. Our community is made up of a diverse group of individuals, members coming from all over the world, including China, Argentina and Greece. We speak different languages, come from various educational backgrounds and have different skill-sets, but what is common no matter who you ask, is that we are proud to be members of the DANSIC family.

We are open to all

We take pride in DANSIC’s values, such as peer-learning, creativity and diversity. These are also reflected in our hiring process, since we are looking for candidates that would thrive in an environment with such principles. However, we do not want to complicate things and make the hiring process a super overwhelming experience for candidates – it is pretty straightforward actually.

When we post a vacant position, we ask candidates to send their CV’s together with a short message about their motivation on why they want to join DANSIC. We don’t expect full length cover letters, because most of the time, already from the short email and the CV, we can tell if the candidate has potential, which we can then explore in an interview. If you want to read some of our volunteers’ personal motivation on why they joined DANSIC, check out our previous blogpost. So after screening the applications, we invite candidates for an interview, which resembles an informal conversation between one of our HR Specialists and one of our Crew Directors, and we always try to create a relaxed atmosphere. The interview gives us a chance to get to know the candidate and share what we are doing at DANSIC. We try to explore whether he or she is a good fit for the position and for DANSIC as an organization. Moreover, we also want to find out whether DANSIC is the right place for the candidate to get involved in. Once we are through the interviews, we make a decision on whom to hire and welcome the new member to the DANSIC family.

We see professional experience and skills to be relevant for finding out how the candidate fits for the particular position, but they are not the only thing we take into consideration. A candidate might have a great deal of experience in a given field, but it could be that his or her personality or motivation is misaligning with DANSIC’s culture. Another person might have less proficiency in the field, but would be a better fit for our team based on his or her other qualifications. We are not looking for one “holy grail” skill in candidates, because we realise that everyone can contribute with different things and bring different strengths to the table. We focus on creating a team with a diversity of perspectives and experiences. However, we always appreciate an open mindset to teamwork, as collaboration plays a key role in fulfilling our day to day tasks. Most importantly, during the hiring process, we try to recognise what the candidate could bring to DANSIC, whether it is his or her professional skills or enthusiasm about social entrepreneurship or volunteer organizations.

We share and care

We appreciate each and every member’s input in achieving the social innovation goals of DANSIC and that’s why we try to give back to our volunteers. We want to make sure that our members have a positive experience in DANSIC, so we, in HR, regularly check-in with them to see how they are doing – encouraging them to share their ups and downs, so that we can provide them advice or show our support by simply listening. After all, DANSIC is grounded in its volunteers, and without their well-being, we wouldn’t be able to do what we are here to do – to support the development of social innovation.

We laugh

While we work hard to reach the yearly goals of DANSIC, to make sure we don’t always focus only on our tasks, we strive to create a social atmosphere where there is room for all sorts of fun activities. The COVID-19 restrictions practically made us a virtual family, since we have held almost all our meetings online. As we started our journey together not long after the lockdown here in Denmark, we had little time to get to know each other face-to-face, “in real life”. Though that has been definitely challenging at times, it didn’t stop us from fun interactions. Our HR team is making efforts to hold our volunteers together through different online social events. We have had a lovely Sunday brunch, where we spent time together chatting about anything and everything but work over delicious food. At the moment, we are planning an online Pictionary night, where everyone gets the chance to show their artistic or not-so-artistic skills. With such activities, we can unwind and recharge together, so that we are ready for future challenges.

We hope that with this blog post, you got a sneak peek into how we engage with our members here at DANSIC, and if you feel like you resonate with some of the core ideas of our organization, keep an eye on future posts for available positions! Meanwhile, you are always welcome to contact us.

Minimalism: live with less.

Why minimalism?

Have you ever thought about:

• How much of a high-tech phone do we need for calling?

• How many clothes do we need for one season?

• How big a room do we need for one person?

• How much furniture do we need for one room?

Modern human beings are constantly exposed to numerous advertisements. We are told that ¨You are not cool enough without the newest products, the successful experience, the costly icons, and so on¨. People are inescapably affected by celebrities or net influencers, thus trapped in endless desires for money, fashion, fame and success.

To achieve that, we rush the time, work hard and pay the bills, but fail to truly enjoy life. It seems that our world appraises consumerism as the ultimate happiness achieving. It is a common question for us:

• What are the essentials of life?

• How to create our own ideal lifestyle?

What is minimalism?

“Simplicity, clarity, singleness:

These are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy

as they are also the marks of great art.”

- Richard Holloway

Whenever your physical space is filled with stuff, to the point of annoyance, you may ask yourself ¨Do I need all of this? ¨ If the answer is ¨no¨, then ¨Minimalism¨ is the exact solution you are looking for. Minimalism is a philosophy to get rid of materials.

Minimalists believe that we can access happiness and fulfilment beyond materials. Originally, Minimalism was exclusively a concept from the art world, that manifest itself by simple lines, structures and colors. Likewise, the minimalism lifestyle reinforces the essentials of life by removing the attention of unnecessary items.

Practice minimalism is a way to redesign the life and rebuild our mindsets.

A change of perspectives

You may be curious about ¨…So…to be a minimalist, does it point to own less and not buy anything new? ¨

The answer is ¨ Could be, but that is just the surface¨.

Literally, Minimalism means ¨Own fewer possessions, less stuff ¨,

but what matters more is to change the way and the perspectives we think.

Internality

Joshua Becker said ¨ being a minimalist means intentionally promoting the things we most value ¨. Minimalism is marked by the inner clarity and right state of mind. You are clear about your purpose and passion, less influenced by the external chaotic situation. That is an internalized condition that leads us to take back control of our lives.

Priority

Colin Weight said: ¨ Minimalism is about the reassessment of your priorities so that you can strip away the excess stuff.¨ That is what Minimalism really talks about, to live with things you really need and declutter the possessions, ideas, relationships and activities that don’t bring value to your life.

Passion

After removing excess stuff, what will minimalism keep? Passion. You will see how passion brings you unprecedented happiness implemented in your life by dedicating yourself. Saying goodbye to impulsive buys and non-purposeful chases, you will invest your time and effort on your real hopes and dreams, to seek a greater life. It will help you by make you start thinking about ¨What matter most to you?¨.

Check here, and you will find more advantages of changing perspectives and designing a simple life as a minimalist.

Minimalism Challenge: Project 333

You may build an impression about Minimalism now. To better understand the minimalism lifestyle, I will introduce a minimalism challenge named ¨Project 333¨ to you. Project 333 is the minimalist fashion challenge that invites people to dress with 33 items or less for 3 months. The method of Project 333 is to remove stress from life simply by reducing the number of items in your closet.

If you are you interested and eager to be a minimalist as well, there are ten simple minimalism guidelines and a comprehensive guide on Minimalism guiding you to practice the minimalist lifestyle.

What Minimalism means to us?

Minimalism's main benefit is to bring people back to the essentials of life and recover the mindfulness. As Anthoy Ongaro said, ¨ Minimalism is how I reduce distractions in my life so I can do more of what matters.¨

Also, Courtney Carver mentioned the power of simplicity in her book ¨Soulful simplicity¨. She said ¨ Give yourself all the space, time and love to remember who you are¨. An increasing number of people find that Minimalism helps them slow down life and free themselves from trivial items.

The fact that minimalism changes people’s lives shows us how living with less can lead to more. That is what Minimalism is about:

Less is more.

Less distractions, more concentrations.

Less possessions, more values.

Less unnecessary, more essential.

Less hysteria, more passion.

Less materialism, more spiritualism

….

What else do you think of?

Ready?

If you already feel overwhelmed and tired, why not start by simplify your life a little? Like a minimalist. It is time to discover what matters in our lives and reposition ourselves. Why not begin from decluttering our personal space to make space for soul care, spare the time for the best things, and welcome fresh mindsets.

Afterwards, you will be connected with new experiences, feelings and relationships. At that time, you will have the power to define your philosophy of living and pursuit the things you truly love.

We are looking forward to hearing your stories.