Convenors are the connective tissue within communities that make SDG localization possible.
Convenors help to raise awareness about the SDGs, foster dialogue around issues and solutions, and create places and platforms for learning and connection between community members. Convenors are organizations and individuals with existing connections and partnerships, and can be leveraged to help people find common ground so impact can be amplified, and sustained. Read more about the role of Convenors below!
Strategies and Actions
In order to be engaged in SDG localization, changemakers need to understand what the SDGs are and how they can be used to make progress locally. Raising awareness about the SDGs is often one of the early steps in the localization process and can inspire a sense of connection and responsibility, while also helping to lay the groundwork for collaborative work in the future. Convenors, who speak the languages of many different sectors, are well positioned to help raise SDGs awareness, increasing community-level understanding and action planning. With increased awareness of the goals and values of the SDGs local people can develop a sense of ownership over the localization process and begin to develop solutions that work in their local contexts.
Convenors create space for SDG learning and conversations – both in-person and online. Today, there are more and more opportunities for virtual engagement. Regardless of where learning, connection and conversations are happening, convenors can work to empower local efforts and foster community involvement – and help SDG changemakers find allies. In this way, convenors help to promote alignment between local changemakers and encourage discussion across-sectors that can lead to new and innovative solutions. Efforts of convenors can help to ensure dynamic, inclusive, and effective engagement around the SDGs in local communities.
Convenors play a crucial role in supporting the growth of collaborations and partnerships to advance the SDGs. Cultivating a common vision that is inspired by the SDGs – and grounded by local priorities can be a valuable way to build partnerships around common goals. Through fluency in the shared language of the SDGs, convenors can help to bring people together – both within and across sectors – finding new opportunities for collaboration and partnership driven by a shared, community focused vision for the SDGs.
Examples: Convening in Communities
Supporting SDG Localization in Mid-Sized Cities
Mid-sized cities have been identified as places where innovative approaches to social and economic transformation are emerging. Across Canada these mid-sized cities – ranging in size from 50,000 and 500,0000 people – are incredibly diverse with adaptive qualities which offer opportunities to develop, test and co-create strategies for sustainable development. SDG Cities was a project designed to explore how the SDGs could be activated in mid-sized cities. Project collaborators, 10C Shared Space and the Pillar Nonprofit Network worked locally to increase understanding of the SDGs and their relevance to local communities. By sharing local stories of SDG action and integrating SDG language into their own program impact communications and storytelling, both 10C and Pillar demonstrated how the SDGs could truly be used as a “shared language”.
Beyond the Goals: Understanding Human Rights and Leave No One Behind
Raising awareness about the SDGs must extend beyond a growing familiarity with the 17 goals, to include the foundational principles and values that guide implementation of the goals, including human rights and Leave No One Behind (LNOB) (Mensah, 2022). Those left behind are often economically, socially, spatially, or politically excluded and not only left behind, but pushed back by policies and oppressive systems (United Nations, 2018). Actively working to leave no one behind means reaching those who are furthest behind first, and working to identify and dismantle the factors that are pushing people back.
In Canada, Indigenous people and communities are those furthest and most often left behind. Moving forward on the SDGs and the foundational principle of Leave No One Behind, means increasing awareness of the 17 SDGs and their relationship to other frameworks and action plans – such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). UNDRIP articulates the rights which “constitute the minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of the Indigenous peoples of the world” (United Nations, 2007). As a global agreement, UNDRIP, like the SDGs, requires local awareness and action to ensure Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty can be realized. In their leadership of an SDG localization process in Nogojiwanong | Peterborough, the Kawartha World Issues Centre and Green UP worked to increase awareness of the SDGs by centering Indigenous experiences, knowledge and leadership from the very beginning. This focus on Indigenous leadership throughout the process of SDG localization emphasized the marginalized status of Indigenous communities nationally and locally, and helped the community come together to understand and take action on the principle of leave no one behind in a local context.
