It can be difficult to feel hopeful when we look at the world around us. Climate change, biodiversity loss, inequality and poverty are immense challenges. Progress can feel slow, and the decisions made by governments do not always reflect the scale or urgency of what is needed.
But there is another story worth paying attention to: Many people aren’t waiting for our government to wake up: All over Ireland, people are coming together in their own communities, developing initiatives to care for nature, grow food, make their neighbourhoods more welcoming, learn new skills and find practical ways to reduce their carbon footprints.
Connecting the global and the local
From 19–27 September, people and organisations will come together for SDG Week, exploring the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and what they mean for creating a fairer, healthier and more sustainable world.
For us in GAP, the SDGs are not simply a set of global targets. They are a way of understanding the connections between the things that matter in our everyday lives and the wider challenges we face together.
Our health is connected to the places where we live. Food is connected to biodiversity. Climate change is connected to inequality. Education can give people the knowledge and confidence to take part in creating change.
Everything is connected, because we are part of a living world.
It is easy to imagine that tackling global challenges is someone else’s responsibility. Many people feel that the government, or large corporations, need to change before they themselves will take action. In reality, we need both. As Eamon Ryan said this week: “We need both top-down government decision-making and a bottom-up community effort; but in the absence of political leadership in the centre, then local action is where we have to begin.”
Communities already have much of what is needed to get started: local knowledge, practical experience, relationships and a willingness to help one another. When people have the opportunity to come together, they can share what they know, learn from each other and find practical ways to make a difference in the places where they live.
Our GLAS community gardens are good examples of this idea. They provide space to grow food and support biodiversity and, equally importantly, they bring people together, give children the chance to discover where food comes from, provide opportunities to share skills and knowledge, and create a place where people feel connected to their neighbours and to the natural world. In our community gardens, people discover that we are not simply observers of the environmental challenges around us, but that we are part of our communities and our local environment.
Learning, connecting and taking action
This is at the heart of GAP’s Action for Community Transformation (ACT) programme.
Through ACT, people come together to explore the connections between global issues and their own lives and communities. Climate change, inequality, consumption and global justice are not treated as distant problems, but as issues that are connected to the systems and relationships that shape our everyday lives.
People need space to ask questions, share experiences, learn together and imagine what change could look like where they live.
That is the power of Global Citizenship Education. It can help us understand the wider world while also recognising our own capacity to take part in changing it.
As an SDG Champion, GAP is proud to help make these connections visible and encourage more people to engage with the Global Goals. Because achieving the SDGs will require action at international level as well as in our communities, schools, workplaces and shared spaces.
SDG Week is a chance to think about what the Sustainable Development Goals mean in the places where we live and work. It is also a chance to recognise the people who are already making a difference, in practical and everyday ways.
This SDG Week, let’s celebrate the fact that change does not need to begin with big projects or government decisions, but that it can begin with local initiatives.
Change begins with people coming together, encouraging each other, sharing what they know and finding ways to care for the places and communities they are part of.