The SDSN Canada Members’ Meeting was held on May 22nd, 2020, as a side event of the Together|Ensemble conference. The meeting was hosted online on Zoom due to social distancing considerations of COVID-19.
Twenty-five Canadian post-secondary institutions were represented in the meeting with a total of 55 participants. A highlight of the meeting was Ambassador Sarah Mendelson's presentation on creating Voluntary University Reviews (VURs). In the video below, she shares her experience on creating a VUR at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). CMU plans to launch the first VUR in September 2020.
At CMU, the VUR aims to:
- Increase awareness on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
- Increase engagement on the SDGs
- Take stock of action on the SDGs
- Communicate action for the SDGs
- Identify opportunities for improved actions towards achieving the SDGs
Watch a recording of AMB Sarah Mendelson's presentation. Also featuring Mathew Thijssen, Director of the University of Waterloo Sustainability Office and Megan Fulmes from the University of Saskatchewan International Research and Partnerships Office.
Ambassador Sarah E. Mendelson is Distinguished Service Professor of Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and Head of Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College in Washington DC. She served as the US Representative to the Economic and Social Council at the United Nations from 2015 to January 2017 and was the USUN lead on international development, human rights, and humanitarian affairs. Prior to USUN, she served from 2010 to 2014 as a Deputy Assistant Administrator at the US Agency for International Development where she was the Agency lead on democracy, human rights, and governance, and interagency lead for what became SDG 16.
She has spent twenty-five years working on development and human rights as a scholar and a practitioner. Her current work centers on growing and supporting the generation that will demand and deliver the Sustainable Development Goals—Cohort 2030—with a focus on building peaceful, just, and inclusive societies. At Carnegie Mellon, she co-chairs the University’s Sustainability Initiative announced by the Provost at UNGA 74.Ambassador Mendelson received her BA in History from Yale University and her PhD in political science (international relations) from Columbia University. She is the proud daughter of Canadian parents who attended Acadia University and Dalhousie University.