SDG Summer School
In September 2015, world leaders committed to 17 Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs. Over the next 15 years, governments will strive to achieve goals such as ending extreme poverty, fighting inequality and tackling climate change. To achieve these goals, we need to enable today’s youth to play an active and meaningful role in tackling the SDGs.
The motivation of the SDG Summer School 2017 is for teams of University students, in close collaboration with UN organisations, to conceive ways to use open data, crowdsourcing technologies, and low-cost open source solutions to tackle sustainable development in ways that even schoolchildren can participate in, and develop prototypes suitable for deployment.
The SDG Summer School has three parts:
PART 1
3-14 July, Geneva
During the Geneva part of the SDG Summer School, the focus is on meeting with experts from the University of Geneva, the UN and other International Organizations to explore how various forms of open data and technologies could make a difference in tracking and tackling the SDGs. Based on expert guidance, students work in teams to conceive novel solutions, suitable for use by students and their teachers in middle and high school.
PART 2
17 July – 11 Aug
During the SDG Summer Project, which lasts four weeks, student teams develop their concept and design a prototype, while working in one of the laboratories of a recently established network called the United Labs for the Global Goals. These labs each have their own area of expertise, and the location of each team will depend on the project's specific needs.
PART 3
14 – 25 Aug, China
At the Tsinghua part of the School, students spend one week in Beijing and one in Shenzhen. They work with a range of low-cost consumer technologies and open source software tools in order to build their prototype, in close collaboration with Chinese middle and high school students. They learn about how their prototypes can be produced in China’s vibrant manufacturing hub Shenzhen, and present their final results to a panel of design, development and production experts.
In Partnership with
