Stubbornly Optimistic About Progress

The world will never meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals on time if climate change continues unabated at this rate. But we are stubbornly optimistic about progress. Why? The innovative work of our grantees.

The U.N. 2022 annual report on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) sounded a clear warning. With only eight years until the 2030 deadline, the report noted deep challenges to achieving the 169 targets embedded in the goals. The reasons are fourfold: climate change impacts, Covid-19 repercussions, supply-chain disruptions, and more violent conflicts than any year since 1945.

The report is sobering. But the transformational work of our grantees is moving the needle globally. As a group, they are helping overcome setbacks to achieve equitable and timely development ambitions.

They are rethinking school lunches, creating procurement systems that encourage schools to buy nutritious produce grown locally and in environmentally sustainable ways while bringing dishes like asparagus fries to underserved districts.

They are breeding “Rainbow Rice” in Thailand, using rice leaves to make a powder that adds antioxidants and micronutrients to baked goods, instead of burning those leaves and emitting greenhouse gases.

From building trust as part of a wastewater monitoring project in Ghana to supporting employee ownership to help close the racial wealth gap, they are taking paths less traveled to achieve impact and meet global objectives, #MakingOpportunityUniversal and sustainable.