We all have our own goals. Some are small; ‘must get home on time today’, and some are larger; ‘find a job I enjoy more’. Humanity’s greater needs, defined by the global sustainable development goals (SDGs), can be easy to overlook on a day-to-day basis. They occasionally align with our personal projects, but often don’t.

On a recent visit to the SDGs Impact Lab here in Oxford a set of cards caught my eye. Published by ‘Good Life Goals’ they help us define our own, personal contribution to the massive, sometimes overwhelming SDGs project. I have the cheery red one for 1 HELP END POVERTY on the corner of my desk. On the back it lists 5 things I can either do or keep in my mind, to play my individual part in ending poverty.

Help End Poverty Actions. 1 Learn the causes of poverty at home and abroad 2 Share and donate what you can 3 Buy from companies that pay people fairly 4 Save, borrow and invest responsibly 5 Demand decent wages and opportunities for all

Some of these things I do already, and I’m hoping these extra reminders through this month will help me to act more consciously when I read the news, and chose who I buy from and where I invest. I’m not just making good decisions for myself and my community, I am helping (in a very small way) to end poverty everywhere. I can almost certainly find ways to share and donate more and be even more careful where I spend money.

Good Life Goals have lots of resources for this programme, including a fun video which begins

For the goals to be reached, everyone needs to do their part; governments, the private sector, civil society,
and people like you

https://youtu.be/bbrYODvkvGk?feature=shared&t=13

Here at the Global Academy we work to show how researchers are contributing to achieving the 17 Global Goals. We are all individuals too, making choices and decisions every day that change the world around us. At a recent SDGs Workshop someone raised the question ‘What is enough and when do we have enough?’ Most rich countries, and the people who live in them, now have ‘enough’ by any measure, even though resources are unequally shared across their population.

Global poverty is a massive, wicked, interconnected problem. I can’t fix it on my own; I have to call on governments to act. But there are some things I can do myself.


The first in a series of 17 articles looking at personal actions and the Global Goals, using the framework suggested by Good Life Goals.