BONN 15 December 2016 (UNRIC) – The United Nations SDG Action Campaign, with the support of the Federal Government of Germany, offered a behind the scenes tour of the new Global Campaign Center in the historic Haus Carstanjen today.
The Global Campaign Center is a strategic hub to deliver the UN SDG Action Campaign’s mandate to inspire people’s action on the Sustainable Development Goals; connect and amplify stakeholder efforts; aggregate citizen-generated data; showcase impact; share best practices; and incubate and test out innovative efforts around SDG implementation. The Center will strengthen the United Nations in Bonn as a hub for global sustainability.
The interactive tour showcased the Campaign’s work including virtual reality film screenings, the new MY World 2030 survey to track progress of the SDGs, SDG photo exhibit and data analytics visualizations.
According to Dr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Federal Foreign Minister of the German Government, “The 17 sustainable development goals or ‘SDGs’ provide the necessary tools to change life on our planet to the better. They are meant to permeate and change all fields of society. The ability of the Agenda 2030 to get moving, to get momentum is vital – because this will be the benchmark by which its success will be gauged. The UN SDG Action Campaign supports this process from close-by. For Germany it is a great responsibility and honour to host the new headquarters of the Action Campaign with its Global Campaign Center in Bonn.”
Dr. Gerd Müller, Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, said, “The 2030 Agenda is the international community’s response to the question of humanity’s survival – and now it needs to go from being words on paper to being inscribed in the hearts and minds and expressed in the everyday lives of people around the world. As Development Minister, I am particularly pleased that the United Nations has chosen Bonn as the location for the offices of its Global SDG Action Campaign Center. There are now 1,100 UN staff working in Bonn, from where the UN SDG Action Campaign will spread the ideas of the Agenda for Sustainable Development around the globe. The Global Campaign Center can be assured of strong support for its work from the German government.”
Mr. Mitchell Toomey, Global Director the UN SDG Action Campaign, expressed, “The establishment of the Global Campaign Center in Bonn is testament to Germany’s unwavering commitment to the SDGs, and the international quality of Bonn as a UN city and a sustainability hub. The Center will equip the Campaign to deliver on its mandate to foster buy-in of the SDGs among all stakeholders, facilitate mechanisms for public engagement in SDGs participatory monitoring and accountability, and create an open and inclusive SDG people’s action platform. We look forward to working side by side with our neighbors in the Knowledge Center for Sustainable Development of the UN System Staff College and the broader UN Bonn family.”
The Global Campaign Center will be central to the UN’s strategy of providing real-time cutting-edge advocacy support, big data expertise and analytics to Member States and partners across the globe, from Bonn. The public announcement of the presence of the UN SDG Action Campaign in Bonn, supported by the Federal Government of Germany, will take place in the World Conference Center on 1-3 March 2017.
The UN SDG Action Campaign is one of the newest members of the United Nations in Bonn. UN Bonn comprises of 19 organizations and serves to help governments and people find answers and ways for humanity to achieve a sustainable future on this planet.
Media contact:
UN SDG Action Campaign
Xavier Longan: xavier.longan@undp.org
+49 (0)1 514 336 14 25
UN SDG Action Campaign
The UN SDG Action Campaign is a special initiative of the UN Secretary-General administered by the UN Development Programme and mandated to support the UN system-wide and the Member States on advocacy and public engagement in the SDG implementation.
The Campaign serves as a “universal entry point” for citizens to engage with the SDGs and support implementation efforts, focusing on building a popular, people-centered convening platform, involving a broad group of stakeholders to build strong political will for Agenda 2030 and facilitating citizen-driven data to fill data gaps and drive accountability at national, regional and global level.
The Global Campaign Center of the UN SDG Action Campaign is located in Bonn at Haus Carstanjen, which will ensure the synergetic efforts and joint work of the UN SDG Action Campaign with the Knowledge Center for Sustainable Development of the UN System Staff College. Haus Carstanjen was the first site of UN Bonn and housed the signature of the historic Marshall Plan.
UN SDG Action Campaign initiatives:
- Influencing and monitoring the SDG agenda: MY World 2030 is an adaptable platform for citizen-generated data and engagement with the SDGs. MY World 2030 allows people from around the world to tell the UN what they are passionate about in the SDG agenda and offer a gauge of perceived progress until 2030.
- Sharing human stories behind the data: Humans of MY World is an initiative launched in early 2014 to show the human faces and stories behind the MY World data. Youth advocates traveled to over 30 countries around the world to gather photo-testimonies on what matters most to anonymous individuals. In addition to the Facebook page, which has over 33,000 followers, and social media campaigns, the testimonies were used in over 11 High-level meetings to bring the voices of the people directly to decision makers.
- Changing perceptions and building empathy: The UN Virtual Reality Series is a project that leverages virtual reality technology to show the human story behind development challenges, allowing people with the power to make a difference have a deeper understanding of their world.
- Creating space for citizen input: World We Want is a joint venture between the UN and Civil Society, the World We Want enables people to engage, visualize and analyze people’s voices on sustainable development.
- Inspiring action with innovation and data: Data playground exhibitions featuring interactive displays of citizen-generated data and storytelling initiatives. Using large touch screens, viewers can touch and play with visualizations, making “big data” fun and exciting. The data is paired with different storytelling initiatives to allow for tangible understanding and examples of the people behind the data, such as MY World and the World We Want.
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