UN Ukraine Summer Course 2014: The World We Want

Dear Oleksandra,

As the “UN Ukraine Summer Course 2014: The World We Want” is fast approaching, you may wonder what “the world we want” part of it actually stands for, so let us explain you a bit of its background.

You may have heard about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and their deadline in 2015? MDGs are globally recognized measurable targets, set by the world community in the Millennium Declaration in 2000 to address the starkest inequalities in the global human development.

As MDGs will meet their deadline next year, but the inequality in the world still persists, the world community is currently in the process of identifying a new global development agenda that would go beyond 2015 – named as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – and this time the work is done through the widest ever global participatory process, where the world citizens will have their say about “the world we want”, and the global priorities will then be set by the world leaders in response to those.  

Ukraine has from the very beginning been one of the most active countries taking part in the global discussions – maybe you also participated in the post-2015 national consultations conducted here in 2013 (see final report here) or voted for your priorities in the MY World –global survey?

Why is all this important? For the first time in history the world citizens can now actually influence the priority setting and decision-making at the global level. Supporting this aim, we will also during our course think about the Ukrainian priorities and conduct an exercise to define measurable targets to those.

In particular, during our first course meeting on Monday 28 July at 6:30pm, we will conduct a “Sustainable Development Goals workshop”, where each of the course participants will get a chance to jump into the role of a decision-maker and define the Ukrainian SDGs in response to the priorities voiced out by the Ukrainian public.

The workshop will be conducted in small groups of five people, and in order to ensure a smooth work in those, we would kindly ask you to familiarize yourself prior to the workshop with the attached “Sustainable Development Goals Workshop Outline”, as well as with the background material prepared for your small group, which you may also find attached and from where you can get ideas on what issues according to the Ukrainian public should be addressed when defining the SDGs for Ukraine.

Your small group topic is: EGUALITY OF OPPORTUNITIES AND SOCIAL JUSTICE      

If you have time and interest, you can already start thinking about your inputs to the small group tasks (see tasks in workshop outline) – the better prepared you come to the workshop, the more lively the discussion there will become and the greater are its results!

Hope this information is adequate for you to prepare to the workshop & do not hesitate to get back to us if any further details would be needed!