Countries around the world are working to meet Sustainable Development Goals. The Girl Power Project being implemented in Jharkhand is also assisting the government in realising some of these goals.
Planned, inclusive and all-around development is the mantra of countless countries in the contemporary world. However, they need a framework to work on these lines. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals do just that. The concept of SDGs has been so successful that governments and various organisations and projects are also trying to fulfil as many SDGs as they possibly can.
About SDG Agenda
The 17 goals adopted by all UN member states in 2015 are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and improve people’s lives everywhere. The goals were set out as a part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, setting out a 15- year plan to achieve them.
According to the United Nations Development Programme, the role involves targeting the most vulnerable, increasing primary resources and services and supporting communities affected by conflict and climate-related disasters.
Effect of COVID-19 on SDG
As per the findings of the SDG Report 2020, ‘it is estimated that 71 million people are expected to be pushed back into extreme poverty in the year 2020, which is the first rise in global poverty since 1998’. The global effect of the COVID-19 pandemic has affected women and children with an increase in domestic violence reports against women and children. Each sector has been hit. More than one in every six people have stopped working since the start of COVID-19, while the rest who are still employed have seen their working hours cut by 23%, directly affecting wages and salaries.
Businesses must find innovative production patterns to understand better environmental and social impact and how they affect the product life cycle and, eventually, people’s lifestyle. As a responsible consumer of the world, one needs to make informed purchase choices that can make a difference in local businesses adopting sustainable practices.
Why SDGs matter to the Girl Power project?
Girl Power believes in achieving a better and sustainable future by aligning the project activities as per Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations.
Goal 1: No Poverty – The project, through its multipronged interventions around skill development, entrepreneur support groups, market connect, network formation, and policy dialogues, will enable women to engage in the formal economy and move to higher growth and income trajectory.
Goal 5: Promoting Gender Equality by fostering a positive support base for women social entrepreneurs. Empowering women and girls through their enterprises to be independent and aware of their rights. Girl Power aims to improve women’s and girls’ lives through gender empowerment and decision-making both at the household and at the societal level.
Goal 8: Decent Work & Economic Growth – The project is working on developing a standard online marketplace for women social entrepreneurs, an e-commerce site to provide ready access for their goods and services produced.
Goal 12: Responsible Consumption & Production by creating new business opportunities, influencing local business policies and markets to produce new goods and services.
Goal 13: Climate Action – The project focuses on goods and services created by women and girls made from locally available materials and will adhere to sustainable production practices. The project will focus on the sustainable production of goods and services – efforts will also be made to teach women and girls to produce goods and provide services by making use of recycling and reusing existing materials.
Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals, engaging in policy dialogue with policymakers, CSOs, women- led entrepreneurs for fostering an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Ecosystem building of the project by way of networking with larger groups does intent in improving and recognising work of the CSOs in their work areas related to skill building for women and girls. It also intends to strengthen the local policies and strategies related to gender and governance.
Along with CSOs, increased synergies with the state’s elected legislators leading to a broader impact of replication to other parts of the country would lead to theproject’s larger goal