Our world faces an ever-evolving set of challenges and major transformations, from global health pandemics, climate-induced disasters, and rapidly changing economic models using artificial intelligence (among many others). These transformations affect us all, no matter our country, our community, or our geography. Solving for them cannot be achieved individually or by using a single approach. It’s only through a focus on “collective impact” — the commitment by a group of people from different sectors to work together on a common agenda to solve complex problems — that we can imagine, innovate, and implement the solutions needed to create lasting change in the world.
The Sustainable Development Goals are a collective impact framework. They embody a “whole of society approach” and explore how each of the issues represented by the 17 SDGs are closely interconnected with each other. The great opportunity of the SDGs is to help guide governments, businesses, academia, and community organizations towards creating aligned and mutually reinforcing actions that harness the depth and breadth of expertise to tackle global challenges.
To learn more about collective impact, check out the Tamarack Institute’s Collective Impact Toolkit.
Our Focus on Collective Impact
We are pleased to use a collective impact approach as one of the core pillars for the Local Futures project. Through our work, we strive to create the conditions for community stakeholders to work together and with their local government to advance the SDGs. This will be an important focus and message in our work as we engage with community members over the coming few months and prepare for the publication of the Voluntary Local Reviews later this fall.
In April, we will be launching a Community of Practice on Collective Impact and the Sustainable Development Goals, in partnership with the Tamarack Institute. This community of practice will be an opportunity for changemakers across Canada to connect monthly online to build skills and explore how to create a more collaborative environment to advance change in their communities.
More information on registration and curriculum to come soon.