We have achieved a lot during the Global Citizen Festival in India. After months of campaigning and thousands of actions, we made huge advancements in the areas of women and girls, education and water & sanitation.
But there were eight amazing feats we accomplished which didn’t fit neatly into those areas. They’re the square pegs to our round holes. They’re the frosting on the cake; the cherry on top; the bonus footage at the end of your favorite movie.
In all, Global Citizens took 403,000 actions to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals in India. They called on corporations, community leaders, and politicians to take action in favor of the Global Goals.
Here are 9 awesome things Global Citizens accomplished:
Maharashtra’s Chief Minister made three commitments that are set to affect 29 million lives following 100,000 actions by Global Citizens — an open defecation free state by March 2018 for 36,000 lakh household with an investment of 5k crore; to improve the nutrition of 98,000 severely malnourished and 9 lakh moderately malnourished children with an investment of 142 crore; and to build 10 lakh homes for the homeless by 2019 with a pledge of 15,000 crore.
A cross-party group of young politicians, Aaditya Thackeray (Shiv Sena), Milind Deora (Congress) and Poonam Mahajan (BJP), pledge to work together as Global Citizens to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Times of India's Vineet Jain announces that the Teach India program will skill 100,000 people to find jobs by the year 2020. He called on Global Citizens to join Teach India as volunteer-trainers to help India become poverty-free. He also commits to support Global Citizen by tracking the progress of commitments that will be made by political leadership today.
Sonam Kapoor commits on behalf of Earth Day Network to educate 10 million youth and 1 million panchayat women leaders, rural women and girls about the environment and sustainable development, with an estimated value of $5 million.
As PepsiCo Nutrition Ambassador, chef Vikas Khanna affirms that the Quaker Feed a Child program is on track to provide 200,000 meals to children this year.
Bill Gates announced a 15-year commitment to work with the Indian government and partners like the Khemka Foundation to mobilize millions of young Indians to support the SDGs.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon thanked Global Citizens for their commitment and called on them to help implement the SDGs.
After 90,000 Global Citizens took action, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh committed to use the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a policy framework to guide future planning in the state.
Unilever CEO Paul Polman thanked Global Citizens for their commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals, and told Global Citizens that they can count on Unilever to continue their efforts to deliver their water and sanitation commitments.