Global youth input and initiatives are critical when it it comes to successful and sustainable development. Our experiences and perspectives can not be ignored. We are much too valuable. This is our planet too, and we need to speak up and step up! #youthassembly #UN #myworld2015
Este es el mundo que yo quiero, ¿Cuál es que tú quieres para ti y para tu familia? Participa en: www.jalisco.myworld2015.org #ONU #MYWorld2015 #Jalisco
People driven accountability and the World We Want
Paul Ladd, the Post-2015 Team Lead from UNDP, remembers when he first drafted the concept note for "My World – The United Nations Global Survey for a Better World." He was with a colleague at a noodle shop in Tokyo, and they were trying to figure out how the UN could reach out to more people for their opinions on what the post-2015 development agenda should be and how to do so in a way that not only took advantage of 21st century tools but also reached out to the world’s most marginalized people.
What resulted was a survey, My World 2015, that had a three-pronged approach. The first prong was face-to-face data gathered in different countries in the form of focus groups, interviews, and civil society data-gathering. The second prong focused on developing different themes for target audiences. The third prong was the online survey.
Ladd described the process as very decentralized, with about two-thirds of the data collected on the ground in the face-to-face method. To date, the My World 2015 survey has received responses from more than 4 million people from every single country in the world, and the data aggregated by age, gender, sex, and country also represents marginalized groups such as the disabled, the aging, and others. In all of the surveying methods, there are 16 issues to choose from that cover the existing Millennium Development Goals, plus issues of sustainability, security, governance and transparency.
“We had to do this. Why? An agenda that is built on the priorities of people will be a better agenda," said Ladd. "Secondly, lots and lots of people in itself acts as a strong check and balance on the political process. Bringing people in the mix, and giving them a voice will make sure that this agenda is implemented in a better and faster way than the MDGs were."
Mohan Sunkara, CEO of Azri Data Engineering, talked about the data side of the process. “All this data exists, but it wasn’t being mined. People talk about engagement, but how do you track that engagement? They talk about data, but how do you mine that data?” he asked.
Thus came in the The World We Want project, which actually enables people to engage, visualize, and analyze people’s voices on sustainable development. Data engineers such as Sunkara worked hard to aggregate the data and create visualizations and tools that would be useful in understanding what the world is saying in terms of the post-2015 development agenda. It also opened up the engagement process; in addition to voting on development goals, you can find events and engage in post-2015 discussions, or even network in your field in a particular place around the world. As a young person interested in gender issues around the world, I can find other people who are key influencers in my field using this tool.
Individuals are not the only ones to benefit from a people-centered approach to the post-2015 development agenda. These tools have also been useful resources for small NGOs. Ghazala Mehmood, Policy Strategy Group Member of Bakarat, an NGO that provides education for women in Pakistan and Afghanistan, talked about how The World We Want has reached her organization so many miles away from the UNHQ. “This tool has helped small scale NGOs access resources and organizations that they wouldn’t have been normal access to. This tool will enable these people to add their voices, even though these women and girls live in a very remote group,” she said.
I was impressed by this workshop’s clear and dynamic presentation of how people-centered the post-2015 development goals have strived to be. This is a historic moment for the UN – never before has a development agenda gone to such lengths to create an inclusive drafting process nor truly utilized 21st century tools such as easy-to-use web sites, data visualizations, and social media campaigns to involve people to vote on their development priorities. Of course, the next step is to continue refining and modifying the post-2015 development agenda and make sure that it is concrete and realistic. But it is heartening to see how many people have participated in the process. Call it people’s power; they finally have a voice at the table.
-- Ani Hao (@IndieVolunteer)
MY World est une enquête réalisée au niveau mondial, vous demandant de choisir vos priorités pour bâtir un monde meilleur
MY World est une enquête réalisée au niveau mondial, vous demandant de choisir vos priorités pour bâtir un monde meilleur
Les Nations Unies ont lancé un vote mondial pour promouvoir un monde meilleur. Celui-ci vise à recueillir la voix, les priorités et les opinions des populations, afin que les dirigeants internationaux puissent en tenir compte lorsqu’ils prendront des décisions majeures dans les mois à venir
