The Aloha+ Dashboard tracks Hawaii’s progress across the SDGs and is organized into six priority areas using community-driven metrics. The metrics were co-developed through a four-year stakeholder engagement process facilitated by Hawaii Green Growth. The dashboard tracks 280+ indicators using both narrative descriptions and quantitative trends to inform statewide and county-level decision-making. Community working groups regularly meet to update the data, identify new metrics, and establish priorities based on trends revealed by the dashboard.
The Aloha+ Dashboard tracks Hawai’i’s progress across the SDGs. It is organized into six priority areas using community-driven metrics, developed and maintained through a multi-year stakeholder engagement process facilitated by the Hawai’i Green Growth Local2030 Hub.
The dashboard tracks over 280 indicators using both narrative descriptions and quantitative trends to inform statewide and county-level decision making. Community working groups continue to update the data, identify new metrics, and establish priorities based on trends revealed by the dashboard.
This website contains a progress dashboard, links to the state’s Voluntary Local Reviews, and more.
A PhD student at the University of Southern California channels concern for the planet and its people by harnessing the power of the Global Goals to conduct research across cities accelerating climate action worldwide.
Thanks to a collaborative effort between the mayor’s office, former Mayor Eric Garcetti, and The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Los Angeles developed partnerships with other global cities to share knowledge and best practices for SDG implementation. Local PhD student Gaea Morales was so inspired by the initiative that she chose to study its model. Gaea is completing her doctorate degree in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California. Among her mentors are Erin Bromaghim, Anthony Chase, Dawn M. Comer, Sofia Gruskin, Jeanne Holm, and Angela Kim, who have been pivotal to driving SDG efforts across the city. “They really inspired me to understand what local governments are actually doing in terms of these really abstract, big lofty ideals.”
Against the backdrop SDG 13: Climate Action, “my dissertation is about understanding how local governments translate and implement these goals.” Gaea is focusing on developing case studies in Southeast Asia partially because of her connection to the Philippines, where she was born. “It’s been my hope to contribute research on this region, which is simultaneously one of the most climate vulnerable in the world. But also somehow the least represented, not only in international forums but also by extension in the scholarship,” she says.
Her current research dives into how global climate governance across Bangkok, Metro Manila, and Jakarta is leading by example. Quezon City, the largest city in Metro Manila, has already localized air quality monitoring and is working on implementing solar energy in public buildings. Because the city declared a climate emergency it “allowed them to mobilize resources in ways that they wouldn’t have,” explains Gaea.
From a community garden to a 10-acre citrus grove, one man seeks to create an oasis of local agriculture for his historically Black neighborhood in Orlando.
Every Tuesday night at his community garden in Orlando, you’ll find Raymond Warthen serving tacos and spinning jazz and hip-hop. Through music and food, Raymond is forging a closer connection to the residents of Parramore, a historically Black neighborhood where he and his team, including his wife, Cherette, have planted their unlikely oasis, Infinite Zion Farms.
For the city of Orlando, bringing the SDGs home means ensuring that every Orlandoan lives within a half-mile of affordable, healthy food options supplied through local, sustainable agriculture. At Ray and Cherette’s urban farm, SDG 2: Zero Hunger, SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, andSDG 15: Life on Landare flourishing.
What began as a city-supported community garden has blossomed into a 10-acre aeroponic farm in nearby Groveland, Florida that is expected to open in Fall 2025. Powered by solar energy and irrigated through a natural, spring-fed aquifer, the farm and citrus grove is expected to produce more than 1,500 pounds of leafy greens, tomatoes and fruit per month. The expansion is made possible through a collaboration with the local non-profit Adya Care Foundation and his colleague and fellow Floridian, Prince Dorvilus.
For Ray, whose ancestors once farmed the state’s land as enslaved laborers, it’s also an important reckoning for a new generation. He views his garden as a hands-on way for young Black kids in Orlando to connect to their roots, the earth beneath their feet, and the food that grows from it.
“I wanted to build a space that could be an emerald in the city and show local kids not just how to succeed as a Black farmer, but as an engineer, as an architect. These kids come out here now and they learn about solar power, soil mechanics, and more,” Ray says. “You’re not only changing these kids’ minds, you’re changing the whole image of what a Black farmer looks like.”
A community foundation program officer believes in her close-knit community’s resilience in the face of a public health crisis, as she supports a 20-year response to Flint’s toxic water crisis.
“Health to me, is everything.” That’s Senior Program Officer Lydia Starrs’ approach to life and her work with the Community Foundation of Greater Flint. When she first started at the Foundation in 2017, she zeroed in on one area to help manage the Flint water crisis: community building.
“My role was really to help build the capacity here to be engaged in community conversations around the water crisis response,” she says. In support of both SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being andSDG 6: Clean Water and sanitation, she then transitioned to health grantmaking work, particularly investments in the Flint Kids Fund, a 20-year response to mitigate the long-term impact to children’s health and development needs.
“This community still feels in crisis,” Lydia says. Today, the strong-knit community is navigating replacing lead service lines and supporting those whose health has been impacted by toxic exposure. Impacted community members, including families, have not received their full settlement funds, and criminal trials are stagnant, she explains.
Despite these challenges, one way the Foundation is fostering community building and trust is via Flint Lead Free. More than 30 members from public and private organizations can now track, report, and eliminate lead exposure in Flint. “There’s just a natural alignment there between the way that community foundations are trying to solve challenges in their communities, and the way that the SDG’s are trying to solve challenges,” she says.
“We are always trying to meet the needs and rise to the challenge of the issues that are presented to us, and I think the SDGs are a really good way of having a framework that everyone can see themselves in,” Lydia adds. “Your work, your values, your hobbies, your interests, your expertise is connected to at least one [Global] Goal, if not multiple. … You can look at the targets and see where you’re already aligned, and then find ways to measure your progress as a community.”
By Dynahlee Padilla-Vasquez, United Nations Foundation
Through the science of engineering, the insights of data, and the power of collective action, this college student in Pittsburgh hopes to construct a smarter and more sustainable future.
For Purva Bommireddy, the potential and inherent challenge of the SDGs are built into the environment all around us, in the most literal sense. As a double major in Civil Engineering and Statistics & Machine Learning at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Purva is studying how the built environment itself can advance sustainability, equity, and justice.
Purva says it was a high school field trip to New York City’s Moynihan Train Hall during construction that led her to the field of civil engineering. Standing beneath a 92-foot high atrium enclosed by an acre of energy-efficient glass, she remembers realizing how powerful and innovative this field could be and how essential SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure is to addressing our broader sustainability and climate challenges. “Just seeing this orchestra of groups working together to build this project was so inspiring to me,” she says.
Since then, Purva has studied how other cities and countries are transforming the world’s infrastructure. She says her recent experience studying renewable energy in Iceland gave her a clearer picture of the practical questions that come with realizing SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy and SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. Questions like: How can we structure a city so people have access to safe, healthy, and green public parks? How can we promote greener infrastructure like green roofs? How can we promote renewable energy transition and protect the jobs of people in dying industries? And because each of the 17 Global Goals is grounded in nearly 250 indicators, she recognizes that data at all levels will be key to understanding what’s working — and what’s not.
One critical question underlying it all: How do we make sure that no one is left behind?
As an an alumna of the UN Foundation’s Girl Up campaign and now an intern at CMU’s Sustainability Initiative, Purva recognizes the power of collective action and community engagement. It’s why she helped launch a network of youth sustainability leaders at three universities across the city — CMU, University of Pittsburgh, and Chatham — to promote cross-campus collaboration. Her goal is to create a space where local college students can “build a sense of community because there’s a lot of different siloed groups.” “Local advocacy is key,” Purva says of achieving the SDGs in the U.S., especially for the most vulnerable among us. “Let’s zoom in and bring it into that community level.”
This Staten Island teenager is discovering how the unique problems — and potential — of America’s biggest city are reflected in the 2030 Agenda.
As a student at Marsh Avenue Expeditionary Learning School on Staten Island, Camil Demirovic lives less than 20 miles from the UN’s headquarters in midtown Manhattan, but knew little about the organization’s mission, or the Global Goals that had been adopted there by 193 countries.
Launched by the New York City Mayor’s Office for International Affairs, the NYC Junior Ambassadors program introduces 7th, 8th, and 9th students across all five boroughs to the world of international diplomacy and civic engagement through classroom visits with UN officials, field trips to the UN’s headquarters, and a unique curriculum that encourages students to examine their own neighborhoods through the prism of the Global Goals. To date, more than 5,300 students across the city have participated since the program’s launch in 2015 — the same year the SDGs were adopted at the UN.
Learning about the parallels between local issues and global challenges like poverty, inequality, and access to education made Camil realize how these social issues are tied together. He can see, for example, how income and housing disparities in his own borough affect which public schools are deemed “good” or “bad” and by extension, how each of the 17 Goals — likeSDG 10: Reduced Inequalities — reinforce the others. Inspired by this new way of seeing the world around him, he helped create a peer program that helps bilingual students who need English support.
Camil says he now understands why stalled action on the SDGs isn’t just bad for humanity, but for his own hometown: “In my community, there is a big role for a lot of these Goals.”
The Steel City is rethinking its approach to sustainability thanks in part to NGOs like Sustainable Pittsburgh, where Joylette and her team are leading the charge by expanding collaboration and innovation around the SDGs.
Nowadays, Joylette Portlock doesn’t need to explain what “sustainability” means. But when the non-profit she oversees first launched more than 25 years ago, the word had yet to become a household term.
Since 1998, Sustainable Pittsburgh has served a 10-county region in southwestern Pennsylvania, including the Steel City. Unlike other NGOs with a narrower focus, Sustainable Pittsburgh is unique in its commitment to sustainability in the broadest sense — from access to clean water (SDG 6) and decent jobs (SDG 8) to sustainable production and consumption (SDG 12). This multifaceted mission reflects one of the most powerful aspects of the SDG framework: Our most urgent problems are interconnected, so the solutions must be too.
Sustainable Pittsburgh’s comprehensive, systems-level approach proved crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic, which wreaked havoc on the most vulnerable while revealing just how interrelated our societies — and supply chains — have become. In southwestern Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, the global shutdown in spring 2020 led to huge economic losses for the city’s residents, especially those working minimum-wage jobs without benefits. Ironically, the same people who earned a living in food service and food production were disproportionately pushed into poverty and food insecurity.
In response, Joylette and her team at Sustainable Pittsburgh co-launched Allegheny Eats, a meal kit program that brought together local farmers, residents, and restaurant owners to help put food on the table for the area’s most vulnerable. Ingredients for the meal kits were partially sourced from 15 local farms and food producers prepared by six local restaurants. Proceeds funded free meals for out-of-work service industry professionals negatively impacted by the pandemic. The city of Pittsburgh; CRAFT at Chatham University and 412 Food Rescue, a local nonprofit that redistributes surplus food from restaurants and grocery stores, were among the 10 local partners who co-led this innovative, cross-sector initiative.
“You can’t talk about climate without talking about education, without talking about the economy, without talking about equity,” Joylette said during a discussion with the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh in 2020. “These things are all tied together. … If we really want to see these changes, we have to start creating new and better and deeper collaboration.”
