Turning the Tide: Youth Rally for Sustainable Development Goals at the Agenda 2030 Midpoint

Empowering Youth: Urgent Call for Concrete SDG Action. Anoushka Sinha, global activist, demands accountability, transparency, and innovation in achieving sustainable development goals by 2030. Join the movement for change.

Toronto, Canada – October 27, 2023 —

The seventeen sustainable development goals were established in 2015 at the UN General Assembly; they were adopted after reaching the end point of the seven Millennium Development Goals. The 17 sustainable development goals focus on the complete wellbeing, equal rights and freedom of people everywhere and serve as a ‘blueprint’ to achieve a better and sustainable future with their completion date set for the year 2030. Now in 2023 the world now stands at a midpoint for achieving the goals. As aptly said by the General Assembly President during UNGA 78 at the SDG Action Weekend “today we stand at a crossroads and the actions we take today will be a decisive factor for our future generations for years together.” With only seven years left to achieve the SDGs, youth activists are taking things into their own hands.

As a means to ensure that young people’s voices reach to the forefront of these important decision making tables global youth activist and UN Leader Anoushka Sinha’s SDG focused, youth led foundation ‘Anupam Foundation’ is globally launching the ‘My Letter, My Voice’ campaign. After hearing from multiple young people across different sectors, countries it was found out that most of them feel that their participation is rather tokenistic instead of it being authentic. To add to this many youth are unable to access these spaces let alone lend a voice and this can happen due to multiple reasons such as financial constraints, lack of funding or visa issues that hinders these dialogues from getting a global perspective. In order to bridge these white spaces and bring about young people at the core of these discussions the ‘My Letter, My Voice Campaign’ is being launched in November this will allow young people to write a letter to a world leader of their choice and make sure their experiences are taken into account and that they are represented. This unique campaign allows young people from across the world to submit their personal opinions, perspectives and suggestions on what they believe should change in a focus area of their choice it can talk about any of the seventeen sustainable development goals. The virtual letters will be collated and presented to world leaders at upcoming global forums one key upcoming one being the biggest climate event of the year COP28 which will be held in Dubai this year.

This campaign is going to translate the countless discussions, point of views and diverse perspectives that young people have to offer into tangible letters that will be presented and read to world leaders. What youth need is no more pledges but concrete proposals, a higher number of investments that seed capacity building, that allow for those who stand on the frontlines to get access to vital aid. Gen-Z leaders need this aid to reach the hands of those affected instead of it trickling down or getting stuck into the complex political pipeline. In order to progress further towards achieving these goals young leaders need the forthcoming efforts to be rooted in innovation and more importantly ask for these efforts to be data driven to ensure transparency. Moving forward young people demand accountability from their leaders, representatives of state and ensure that instead of empty promises they seek to have concrete action plans set in place. The My Letter My Voice Campaign will serve as a catalyst for all of these strong opinions to reach the right decision-making tables to ensure no one is left behind.

There are over 1.8 billion young people in the world between the ages of 10-24 years old thus young leaders everywhere are not just mere checkboxes to a demographic requirement, they are the key stakeholders and decision makers. For years on end their voices have been sidelined but they have persistently lobbied, rallied and advocated courageously on critical issues such as climate change, gender inequality only for world leaders and huge corporations to trample over their efforts to raise awareness on issues that matter to us the most. The clock is ticking for us now even more rapidly as those in power continue to sideline pressing issues like the climate crisis and to add fuel to the fire oil and gas corporations get away with larger contracts to plague the world even further. Today the world is hundreds of years away from attaining any kind of gender equality with the pandemic only straying everyone away from any progress that was made and at the same time climate change is increasingly wreaking havoc around the world with uncontrolled forest fires, floods and landslides that push the most vulnerable like women and children to the sidelines and to add to this the world is experiencing increased disparities be it unequal access to education or loss of employment opportunities as a result of the increasing disparities that only grew after the COVID-19 pandemic. The increasing inflation has already made matters worse for those from the marginalized communities. These hiccups have pushed the world further away from the path to achieve the ‘global goals’ timely. Whilst these issues are already ravaging the world, world leaders are not stepping up and with less than seven years left to achieve the agenda for 2030 they need to take immediate action.

Young people especially those in developing countries and vulnerable areas are at the forefront of bearing the brunt of this crisis. They no longer demand a seat at the table they need concrete action. With a demographic so huge, young people are already leading their own youth-led missions, organizations they already are stakeholders and so they need to be heard and listened to. What they have seen and felt throughout the General Assembly week is that there’s been much chatter around bringing youth to the table but more often that has been tokensitic. Young leaders demand that policy makers and world leaders build strong intergenerational networks between governments, the UN and the youth to ensure that their opinions count to bring about change at the systems level. The Anupam Foundation and it’s goal has always been to bring youth voices to the forefront no matter what their background is. What started as a grassroots movement in a small town in India has now grown globally and with the launch of the new campaign the foundation hopes to remove those barriers that hinder young people from giving their powerful voices to the global discourse. This campaign hopes to ignite creativity, instill fearlessness and provide agency to young people to help them understand that their voices also count and that they are also key units and contributors to decision making. To know more about Anoushka Sinha please refer to the links –

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/anoushka-sinha-frsa-6b77901ab

https://instagram.com/anoushkaasinha

Contact Info:
Name: Anoushka Sinha
Email: Send Email
Organization: Anoushka Sinha
Phone: +14379867126
Website: http://anoushkasinha.net

Release ID: 89111145

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