“There hasn’t been a time that I can remember where there’s never been a fear of contracting malaria,” says the rising junior at Tulane University in New Orleans, where she is studying information technology on a pre-med track. “I’m coming from a country where contracting malaria is almost like a rite of passage because it’s just so common.”

Malaria is one of humanity’s oldest and deadliest diseases. In fact, according to one study, it is estimated to have killed roughly half of all humans in history. Today, despite medical advancements that include two new vaccines, malaria still kills more than half a million people every year. The vast majority of these deaths occur on the African continent. More than half of these deaths are children under the age of five. 

Growing up, Favour says she didn’t fully realize how dangerous malaria could be until another girl at her church, named Titi, died from a mosquito bite. For Favour, achieving SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being means protecting against, treating, and ultimately eradicating malaria to avoid preventable deaths like Titi’s. As a member of the Tulane for UNICEF club, Favour is raising awareness at her school about U.S.-led efforts to eliminate malaria by 2030, including the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), the United Nations Foundation’s grassroots United To Beat Malaria campaign, and the Global Fund. 

In the U.S., where malaria is no longer endemic, Favour has emerged as a uniquely effective advocate — not only on her campus but also on Capitol Hill. For World Malaria Day 2024, she collected 140 handwritten letters from fellow students calling on Congress to turbocharge investment and political will to end the scourge of malaria once and for all.

“I’m so grateful to be able to contribute — even in a small way — to making sure less children have to face an illness like this,” she says.

— M.J. Altman, United Nations Foundation

For Adam Pfister, achieving the SDGs starts with listening — and geography. 

As Lead Solutions Engineer at Esri, a global software company specializing in geographic information system (GIS) technology, Adam works with businesses, governments, and nonprofits to utilize what the company calls “the science of where” to achieve sustainable development and tackle complex challenges ranging from supply chain waste to water sanitation. This means creating, managing, analyzing, and mapping a massive amount of data.

“It starts with understanding and listening to the people you’re talking to,” Adam says. “You don’t just come in and drop the solution on top of their heads and run away. It begins with asking: What do you need to improve your community or company and affect positive change?”  

He points to Esri’s Living Atlas of the World — the planet’s foremost collection of geographic information — as just one example of the tools that can be used to make sense of the unprecedented amount of digital information that exists today. Tools like these will be critical for tracking progress and informing action toward the SDGs, particularly given the framework’s 231 indicators to standardize data collection across borders, backgrounds, and sectors. 

“Say you’ve mapped poverty by county,” Adam says. “Now what?” Using GIS technology, people can add more variables to the analysis, like education rates or water quality, to learn how these issues intersect. The ultimate goal is to share knowledge and inform better policymaking. 

Right now is an especially exciting time to work in the field given the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which promises to unlock even more effective and efficient ways to synthesize and utilize the growing wealth of information available online. Instead of spending hours searching across hundreds of websites, generative AI can take a user’s query and focus the Internet’s vast knowledge on the topic at hand. “It will make data discovery so much easier and can really accelerate research and work,” Adam says. He is currently creating a prototype, dubbed “SDG AI Assistant,” that will pull from government and UN data sets to assess indicators on a local-to-global scale.

This kind of intel is crucial across all sectors — private, public, and academic alike. According to Esri, its customer base includes 90% of Fortune 100 companies, most national governments, 30,000 cities and local governments, all 50 U.S. states, and 12,000 universities worldwide. 

While Esri’s business model focuses on customer success, it’s not the company’s only bottom line, Adam says. “It’s also about using our software to be more responsible to the world.”

— M.J. Altman, United Nations Foundation

The SDG Action Manager is a self-assessment tool for businesses acting on the Sustainable Development Goals. According to B Lab, over 18,000 companies are using the tool, which can help them map and align activities with the SDGs and communicate about those activities and their impact; set and measure progress towards concrete objectives; and serve as a company-wide dashboard.

The site also hosts a “17 Days for 17 Goals,” which shares innovations and ideas for every SDG, culminating in a 2021 SDGs Insight Report.

A SDG data platform produced by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, presenting U.S.-specific data on the 17 SDGs, using publicly-available and globally-comparable data from the Global Sustainable Development Goals Indicator database.

Where trends data is available, downloadable tables illustrate change over time for indicators for each SDG. This site is actively maintained and expected to be updated regularly through 2030.

Storytelling for the SDGs includes stories, data visualizations, and learning resources for the SDG framework and each specific Goal. It also hosts information on how to create data-driven stories through Esri’s ArcGIS StoryMaps, a web-based application for presenting narrative text alongside other multimedia content.

Sample stories demonstrate StoryMap features and explore U.S. and U.S. Territory data on SDG indicators, such as grocery access (SDG 1: No Poverty); America’s mental health crisis through a geographic lens (SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being); biodiversity importance in North America (SDG 15: Life on Land); and more.

This collection was created as a storytelling resource for the Global Councils on the SDGs.

This toolkit of city and state diplomacy briefs “respond to a lack of readily available resources and knowledge,” leveraging examples to provide actionable information for local actors looking to engage on global issues.

The briefs cover a range of themes, including capacity building, democracy, human rights, economic competitiveness, and more. Some examples of the topics covered include:
-How the U.S. Department of State supports international engagement and what services it offers to cities and states
-Engaging U.S. citizens and communities in diplomacy
-Statewide collaboration for global engagement in North Carolina
-An innovation from Dallas: the Mayor’s International Advisory Council composed of retired senior diplomats living in the city

The toolkit is updated on a rolling basis.

Launched in 2015, SDGs Today is a global program on timely data for sustainable development. It curates, produces, and visualizes timely SDG data; co-designs StoryMaps of data-driven narratives around the SDGs; provides training and educational programs for governments, academics, and youth; and engage in projects to close geospatial data gaps, build technical capacity, and raise awareness about the urgent need for geospatial data.

The United Nations Association of the USA (UNA-USA) is a movement of Americans dedicated to supporting the United Nations. With over 20,000 members, 60% under the age of 26, and more than 200 chapters across the country, UNA-USA members are committed to global engagement and their belief that each person can play a part in advancing the UN’s mission and achieving the SDGs.

Intended to help community foundations “unpack the SDG framework,” this report examines how community foundations can use the Sustainable Development Goals to lead local revitalization efforts. It proposes 190 SDG indicators specifically relevant for the U.S. as a starting point for foundations, and identifies a set of indicators relevant to racial equity and the Leave No One Behind agenda.

This report positions the SDGs as a helpful roadmap for philanthropic organizations looking to answer the question: What actions can be taken to solve the biggest, most complex problems in the world and that will lead to long-term, systemic change? Though it was developed in 2020 with an emphasis on responding to COVID-19 and racial equity crises, its examples and approach offer evergreen guidance for community foundations using the SDG framework to improve internal alignment to achieve systemic change.

The City of Los Angeles’ SDG data reporting platform assessing local progress toward each Global Goal, built and hosted using free software and services. This dashboard includes 247 total indicators, with data reported for 173.

While the most recent data on the site is from November 2021, ongoing updates are anticipated through 2030. It also hosts an instructional wiki detailing the process to create a dashboard.

The City of Los Angeles Sustainable Development Goals website hosts additional resources related to the city’s extensive work on the SDGs, including two Voluntary Local Reviews, a media library, and information about projects that address specific SDGs.