The UC3M holds the first SDG Action and Awareness Week
3/1/21
The Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), within the framework of the University Global Coalition (UGC), is organising its first Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Action and Awareness Week from 1st to 5th March 2021.
This event, organised by the UC3M Vice-President’s office for Institutional Relations and Sustainable Development, aims to raise awareness about SDG-related issues through a series of activities open to the UC3M university community and other universities that are part of the UGC. In this sense, most of the events have been scheduled for the evenings to facilitate attendance of Ibero-American and North American students.
The Week’s opening ceremony will take place on Monday 1st March at 6pm for all of the UGC universities, a webinar in English about sustainability literacy as a global challenge for higher education institutions. This session, promoted by the UC3M and the State University of New York (SUNY), will be attended by representatives from the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and the international organisation Sulitest (Sustainability Literacy Test), who will present the report “2020 Raising & Mapping Awareness of the Global Goals” and will release a survey about literacy and awareness of the SDGs that the university community will be able to access via a link.
Two activities will take place on Tuesday 2nd. An online round table about how to achieve gender equality in the African continent will be held at 4pm, organised by the Association for United Nations and International Law (ANUDI) and the Women for Africa Foundation (MXA). A study by the Spanish committee of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) about racism and xenophobia in Spanish universities will be presented at 5pm, and a survey open to UC3M students will be launched. In addition to this, a round table about the issue will be held with representatives from UNCHR and the University.
On Wednesday 3rd, a webinar, co-organised with the Spanish Network for Sustainable Development (REDS, in its Spanish acronym), about education for sustainable development in Spanish universities will be held at 4.30pm. Within this framework, the report “Accelerating Education for SDGs in Universities”, recently published by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) will be presented. In addition to this, the U4Impact Project, an innovative platform that allows university students to carry out their undergraduate and master’s dissertations on real impact projects linked to the SDGs, will be published.
On Thursday 4th at 4pm, various associations and student organisations will organise an online workshop to discuss and reflect on the fulfilment of the SDGs and the role of the student body in this context.
Finally, on Friday 5th March two activities will take place. An online round table will take place at 10am to present EMPATIA-CM, research funded by the Community of Madrid and developed by the multidisciplinary research team UC3M4Safety with the aim of developing an intelligent system that detects situations of fear or panic before situations of danger due to violent aggression. This event will be attended by various women participants from the Getafe Town Council and the UC3M. At 6pm, the Sulitest team will present the preliminary results of the online survey answered by students, lecturers and university staff who form part of the UGC throughout the week at another event sponsored by the UC3M and SUNY.
About the SDGs and the UGC
Adopted by the United Nations in 2015, the 17 SDGs establish a route to address the world’s most pressing challenges by 2030 and enable institutions to present sustainability and the fight against inequality and poverty in a comprehensive way. Agenda 2030 is based on five fundamental aspects, also known as the “5Ps”: people, planet, partnership, peace and prosperity.
The University Global Coalition (UGC), founded in 2019 by a group of university leaders and of which the UC3M is a member, works with the United Nations (through UNITAR) and with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) to integrate the SDGs into education, research, management and leadership by universities in alliance with other political and social players. The UGC allows partner universities to share resources, initiatives and best practices to become global players with a comprehensive approach towards sustainability policies.
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