Project 1

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) considers Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as its primary framework for achieving the 17 SDGs. At the heart of ESD is SDG 4, Quality Education, which serves as both an end goal and how to achieve all the SDGs. The whole-institution approach ESD is not only about teaching sustainable development and adding new content to courses and training. For ESD to be more effective, the educational institution must be transformed. Such a whole-institution approach aims at mainstreaming sustainability into all aspects of the educational institution. (UNESCO, 2017) With its overall aim to develop cross-cutting sustainability competencies in learners, ESD is an essential contribution to all efforts to achieve the SDGs. This would enable individuals to contribute to sustainable development by promoting societal, economic, and political change as well as by transforming their own behavior.

The widespread consensus is that progress on all the SDGs will be stalled if women's empowerment and gender equality are not prioritized and treated holistically. (Wikipedia, nd) Increased education for women and girls can ripple outward to affect life on a local and global scale. Fertility rates, maternal and infant mortality rates, and the quality of life and economic opportunities for girls and women all improve in unison with educational achievement for females.

According to current information retrieved from the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), progress was slow with SDG 4 prior to COVID-19, but inequalities were exacerbated by COVID-19, and with the school closures, years of progress were reversed. Prior to COVID-19, full gender equality, SDG 5, remained unreached, but again here we find that COVID-19 implications include increases in domestic violence, women bearing increased household burdens, and more than 70% of frontline health and social workers fighting the coronavirus, were women. (UNDESA, 2021)