United Nations SDG Action Awards Ceremony 2022
Reporter Choi Ha-eun
haeun.choi.2002@gmail.com
mankind has gone through many wars and people now realize that peace is one of the most important things that must be kept. Therefore, the United Nations was established to keep peace. The core point of keeping peace is that it must be sustainable. Otherwise, people will lose everything and will have to start all over again. That is why the United Nations adopted its 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 Agenda.
The 17 Goals include ending poverty, achieving zero hunger, making good health, providing good quality education, and achieving gender equality and other crucial goals that the world must accomplish together. The United Nations holds the UN SDG Action Awards Ceremony to celebrate people and initiatives that mobilize, inspire, and connect others to bring positive changes regarding the 17 Goals in their fields.
This year's awards ceremony took place in Bonn, Germany, on 27 September and was broadcast live all over the world. There were over 3,000 applications from 150 countries. Among them, there were nine finalists, four winners, and one honorable mention.
The winner of the 'Mobilize' award was 'SUPvivors SAY NO MORE' in Ecuador. 'SUPvivors' stands for super survivors who have been sexually abused. This campaign helped to change society in Ecuador by allowing survivors to speak up and realize that they are not alone. The 'Inspire' award was taken by 'The Masungi Story.' The Masungi Geo-reserve is a tourism campaign started by a small group of young people who have been putting their effort in to rescuing lands and watershed in the Philippines. They made a transformation by showing that tourism does not have to have a negative influence on the environment, but rather it can be another way to rescue nature. The 'Connect' award was given to 'Cypruslnno,' a non-profit startup, created by a young Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot team. Cyprus, an eastern Mediterranean island-nation, has been divided between the Turkish-Cypriot North and the Greek-Cypriot south and the threat of war breaking out is ever-present. However, they established an innovation center within the Cyprus Buffer Zone by transforming a military container unit into a co-working space and startup accelerator. They bridged the gap between citizens and institutions to bring transformation for SDGs by using their online platform which includes tools and resources that connect Cypriot entrepreneurs, startups and innovators.
The 'Honorable Mention' award was given to "Let's do it Ukraine SOS." Let's do it Ukraine SOS is a social project created by the All-Ukrainian Youth Movement. More than 1,500 activists are taking part to deliver humanitarian aid to all victims of the Russian invasion in Ukraine. They made a transformation by mobilizing and scaling up networks that help create safe shelters in Ukraine. Since the war started in Ukraine in 2022, Let's do it Ukraine SOS has brought together a network of volunteers, organizations, departments, municipalities, donors, philanthropists, and opinion leaders to help civilians who suffered as a result of military actions within Ukraine. The leader of the All-Ukrainian Youth Movement "Let's do it Ukraine" Julia Markhel said, "We are motivated by words of gratitude. When we see a smile and hope in people's eyes, the realization comes that together we are strong enough to get through these hard times."
Every age has its own flow. The flow of this age is that nations cannot survive on their own. The world is filled with problems that one nation alone cannot solve, such as refugees, nuclear weapons, and environmental pollution. Lots of nations and people have to be aware of the situation and cooperate to solve the problem. Like the winners of the SDG Awards, all of us need to make an effort to make positive changes in our own fields.