Creating Tomorrow

It was the UN, which traditionally only looks at governments as actors, turned to the whole world including entrepreneurs for the realization of the United Sustainable Development Goals. Then President Barrack Obama formulated it in the following way: “Let’s invest in innovative entrepreneurs, the striving young people who embrace new technology and are starting businesses and can ignite new industries that change the world. I have met young people on every continent, and they can lead the way if we give them the tools they need.”

SDG’s as an (entrepreneurship) education tool

It is not only the fact that the United Nations look at entrepreneurs and innovation that are appealing to us as a program of entrepreneurship. Maybe even more important is the comprehensiveness of the list. The fact that the list has not only been built around only environmental sustainability, and instead includes planet, people, peace, partnership, and prosperity as all indispensable, unnegotiable and equally important parts of sustainability, was important for us.

You might already sense that we don’t look at this comprehensiveness as something you can pick and choose from. A student in energy engineering, who has sustainable thinking at the core of his or her learning objectives, should not only focus on a goal like ‘clean and affordable energy’, especially when you think about the fact that the circumstances of people working in the mines where minerals for solar panels are being won work there under slave-like conditions. And a student focusing on social work or health can’t ignore the influence climate change has on the growing gap between haves and have-nots in this world.

Besides the content, it is also the form which makes the UN Sustainable Development Goals an attractive tool for (entrepreneurship) education. Looking at the logo’s and titles of the seventeen goals almost everybody has an immediate understanding of what it is about. Which ensures a low threshold for those getting introduced to the SDG's or even sustainability for the first time.

Yet, it is important to mention that we are aware that the SDG’s still are the result of a political negotiation. It is a great tool but not complete and we have the responsibility like we have with every tool we use in education, to critically approach this one. Be it on the fact that LGBTQ rights are not explicitly addressed in the existing goals or the fact that as a program of entrepreneurship we not seldom formulate privacy as the eighteenth goal and sixth ‘P’.

“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” – World Commission on Environment and Development

Leading the way

It does not take a big leap of imagination from the words of Barrack Obama to the fact that at the AUAS we stimulate students to think of creative solutions and sustainable innovations. And as a program of entrepreneurship, we do this by stimulating and supporting the way in which these solutions and innovations can make a real impact through entrepreneurship.

For this, we use a method introduced to use by Unitar Cifal Flanders to let student startups think about the impact that they would want to have on the world. And we also let them discover how the changing world as described in the SDG’s is influencing them.

The bigger mission is to convey a sense of urgency to every student of the AUAS about the fact that we are approaching the natural boundaries of our earth, that we should be ashamed of the way there is an enormous gap between those that possess and those who don’t and that war, oppression, injustice, and conflict keep millions of people from pursuing their own dreams and showing their true selves. And that entrepreneurship in combination with their own educational background, convictions, and creativity gives them the tools to make a difference.

_{Are you curious about the use of SDG's in our Entrepreneurship Program, want to visit us in the Amsterdam Venture Studios - Amstelcampus or want one of our researchers or program leaders to speak about this topic, please contact us at ondernemerschap@hva.nl}