The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, also known as the Global Goals) to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice and tackle climate change by 2030 were adopted by world leaders at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015. These global goals are universal, inclusive and signal a bold commitment to people and the planet.
Volunteerism as a vehicle for sustainable development
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development explicitly recognises volunteer groups as stakeholders to achieve the 17 SDGs.
This has strongly emerged from an extensive consultation process led by the United Nations, which has involved over eight million people, and was summarized as follows by the UN Secretary-General in his Synthesis Report on the post-2015 Agenda, The Road to Dignity by 2030:
As we seek to build capacities and to help the new agenda to take root, volunteerism can be another powerful and cross-cutting means of implementation. Volunteerism can help to expand and mobilize constituencies, and to engage people in national planning and implementation for the Sustainable Development Goals. And volunteer groups can help to localize the new agenda by providing new spaces of interaction between governments and people for concrete and scalable actions.
Volunteerism strengthens civic engagement, safeguards social inclusion, deepens solidarity and solidifies ownership of development results.