2019:Program/Free Knowledge and the Global Goals Spotlight Session/Share your story

w.wiki/77y

Share your personal story about the SDGs

#13 Climate action!

I do my best to reduce my carbon footprint. A simple story: I came to Wikimania from France by train. Took me 30 hours, with beautiful landscapes and no stress. :) Trizek (talk) 09:08, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

SDG 3: Good health and well-being

A life-changing story: Two times in my life I have lost over 40 pounds in order to prevent diabetes, which runs in my family, and generally improve my own health and well-being. In both cases, technology and online community were critical to my success. In the first instance, I reported weekly via blog post to my family about my progress. This reporting and accountability helped me succeed. In the second instance, I used a free app on my phone that integrates weight tracking, food consumption and community affirmation to support my efforts. My experiences using technology to improve my health inform my belief that innovative and freely accessible technology will be necessary for accomplishing SDG 3: Ensuring healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. Tjbliss (talk) 09:14, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

#17 and #13

At the Wikimedia Conference 2017, I proposed a session on mapping the SDGs to Wikimedia activities. Nobody joined me, so I sat down alone and started to sketch this out (image) — I'm very happy to see the SDGs literally on center stage at Wikimania right now. I am not attending this Wikimania in person because I made a pledge (in the spirit of the SDGs, especially number 13) to not fly to destinations where I would spend less than a month. So I am attending remotely, and the experience so far is good, thanks to 2019:Video. --Daniel Mietchen (talk) 09:17, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

#4 Quality education

Here in Sweden, I have had the opportunity to get a good secondary and tertiary education. I have not been crippled by tuition fees and have gotten both a second and third chance to catch up after stumbling early in my life. It's an opportunity I wish will be available to all people at some point in the not too distant future. Peter Isotalo (talk) 09:21, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

#4 = All the goals, but...

Thank you for opening with this well thought out, on point, important and relevant introduction. It hints at ways to shed light on the ways in which our thinking is broken. For only just 2 years I have been working in rural communities - I had been carefully prepared for this, and taught how to listen and learn to put my preconceptions apart as much as I could, by some incredible individuals. I thought I was going there to teach, but instead I learned, and what I learned I wouldn't have believed if someone had told me in 10 different ways. What I learned, has changed my life, by starting to change my mindset. I think I am - or was at some point in the last three years, representative of the mindset of a large group present at this conference. Before this experience, my mindset was severely broken - something I still have trouble accepting, because how could it be - I had a world class education, from a system that had received all the resources of a very dedicated and skilled state. I had really interested, interesting, and engaging teachers, yet, there were important bits of understanding that I lacked. It seems that the brokenness in my mindset, came from further back. This mindset goes by many names, but if I call out its name the message disappears in a knee-jerk emotional reaction, much like the kids mentioned who heard the word "museum" - (even though many of us here love museums), we all have our equivalents - we can all name words - and things - that irk us, and that we think are stupid, wrong, or irrelevant - the still important, invisible, yet shiny things that we desperately need to see, hidden behind them. I keep asking myself how we can learn to prompt ourselves to question more, to noticing more of the things we blind ourselves to, by a bias we can't even see.... or maybe one that we see so clearly, that we're blinded by it - like, for many kids, the classroom. It goes deeper than that still - and it should be no surprise: part of the "invisibility" is what is too obvious - it is the between-the-lines of this mindset that kids' unencumbered minds see through: the idea that it is our words that count, rather than our deeds, the mindset that we are to do as we are told, and - perhaps more significantly - the further message between the lines that some people are exempt from this, so that their example does not count, and that we are not to follow that. Also in line with that, the idea that "we deserve", or that some of us are privileged, gifted, special, smarter, or that if you don't have money your voice is obviously meaningless and you don't get a ticket, or you were late, or that things are equal or diverse enough already, or the idea that life is unfair, fair, or that some people get some stuff for free, or that you're not speaking the right language, that you didn't get the right education, or that it's not relevant to you, or that you didn't pay attention, didn't go to class, didn't go to the right class, that you didn't have the ambition, or the idea that everything is static and thought out already, or that we already have all the answers and that that is why we speak with so much authority, or to me, the worst: that "things are conceived, built and made elsewhere". These are clear and unmistakable messages that our deeds send out every day, that rob us of dignity. I think we have come a long way to try to turn away from some of our mindset ills.... but I can't help but feel that this is just "winning slowly". Maybe only the choir I don't need to preach to is hearing me here- to you this is just a call to draw me in, because I am severely isolated in my work - but it is this mindset that gave us our current leaders and political conflict, and that gives them the power to manipulate us. The mindset has useful aspects, but it is fundamentally broken - and it shows in its invisible biases and focus, ones that we've become so accustomed to, that we think that it's the only way of life. And yet, I have had the veil pulled from over my eyes... I have seen communities where many of these do not exist. It speaks to me personally very strongly through the metaphors explained at the beginning for this session. The metaphors allude to confusing the symptom for the cause, or confusing the problem for the solution. It should be no surprise that our history is littered with our bias, and often only reinforces it. We have no sensitivity to it... yet your insensitivity affects our world, and the people in it... Even if we can learn to overcome our assumption that this is just the way the world is, or that we are right until proven wrong, or that everything is okay, and that I, or someone understands, and we as a society are secure and will avoid this in future... until we see and find this splinter in our minds... This session has bruised open the scab that has grown over the splinter in my mind, one that I thought I had started removing, but instead I fear that I might have grown numb, and now I am in an existential panic, again. We think- and try to be "too smart" without realizing it, and we demand the same of everyone, we use it as a yardstick, meanwhile our yardstick is much shorter than we realize... It is a flawed intuition that we have been raised with - an often domineering, unconsultative example that we are following, because we do not even know what consultation looks like, or deem it unnecessary... a foundation on which we have built even our universities and our education systems and much of our modern cultures. My fear is that, regardless of how much consultation, that too much is still too rushed, and that much of these sustainable development goals are still symptoms- and still a result of-, and biased by this broken mindset. We will be measured by some metric of these goals... but how many voices have really been acknowledged - and importantly, acknowledged in full cognition, in a consentual manner and in a constructive discussion in a well defined language - in formulating these goals? Having universal goals is something incredible, and incredily altruistic to try to strive for, and as an attempt at unification, and it's incredible that we've come so far, and have managed so much, and that we're doing something... or is the incredible part that we even still can? Are these goals really as good as they seem? As representative as you think? Perhaps it is relevant, and important and will hit home to those to whom it pertains... but do any of them live in poverty? Deal with inequality? Still? If someone who lives in poverty, has a better quality of life, while they are healthy, a good "work-life-balance" - and working harder without earning any wage - than someone earning a middle class wage living somewhere else... do we really understand poverty? If the goals were truly representative, how would they look different? Can we frame them better? Can we frame them even better in another language? Are we "allowed" to fail at these "goals"? ...How can we know and accommodate for what we don't know? Will failure be a good or a bad thing? I am trying to ask relevant and constructive questions, and I know it's too late - yet, I feel it's not and I am hopeful and optimistic, because it feels like the conversation really expanded today. Thank you for prompting me to have my first interaction with the sustainable development goals, my first interaction "with the UN", with the "department of peace that I didn't know existed, and even though I've been taught is a deception, I have more faith that its not". Thank you for bringing it back down to my scale, my seemingly menial and individual scale - unlike many, I know my government represented me when these were drafted, and that this was written for them and not me, and maybe they did a good job, but now I too, am interested... my government didn't tell me the whole story... I now feel included. And thank you for prompting me to look at this through my newly acquired rural subsistence living lens, using the knowledge and insight that I gained in, what has really just been a brief exposure, to a mindset that is a refreshing reality to a significant portion of the world population - who I feel strongly are not represented. My subsistence-living lens - which is still biased and damaged - and which I still feel that I am to apologize for, because I have been so bullied into aspiring for "more". It was a pivotal moment of anti-rebellion in my teen-age years, when my mom told me: "Even if you choose to live a 'poor' life on the beach, with nothing to your name, I will still be proud of you." That freed me to really perform. But now that I'm an adult, my heart still yearn for 'the world' to give me that same freedom. To set me free. To lift the weight, so that I can fly, not because I am forced, but because I am truly free. I am overwhelmed, underwhelmed, confused, sad, angry, frustrated, and I feel unique, alone, enlightened and irrelevant all at the same time. The blue pill is for me to get a job and forget about all this, because "I can't afford to care" - and it should be no surprise that that is what many people choose, but the problem in that, for me, is that I have a very strong sense of moral obligation and responsibility to do the right thing. What I want to say can be put in words, but the word will sound like "museum" in the metaphor. But it's not. Like others, I have very little assurance that I am going to be lead down a the road to prosperity that has been promised to others (but not to me, I have been told that its not for me) - and perhaps this is why so there are those who are still disenfranchised by this proposition - they have been promised things, that they shouldn't have been promised, in timeframes that can never be met, and told to do things, that didn't fulfill their needs - instead of being asked - and explained the constraints, or given an opportunity to share their their culture, their fears, their stories, their hopes and dreams, their desires, in fear that it's inappropriate... and given an opportunity to see how which of those overlaps with those of others. A museum is a great space for this... but we need more. What is the "rock-paper-scissors" equivalent of a museum? Everyone needs a clear invitation to participate in building and making peace. Like most of us, I have many ideas. But unlike many of those of us who are here, my ideas have been shaped by those who have the highest expectations from technology: those without access to it, those who don't understand it, its origins and limitations - but who can see straight through it in a way that few of us can, those who have not been hypnotized by the technology to serve it in favor of their community. To some, it has become their community, but one that has ceased serving human needs, or human goals, the sustainability goals ingrained in our DNA. For me, it took me being in a very foreign setting, with a dead phone, a useless language, useless money, completely destitute - well, not nearly as destitute as I could have been - and I have seen people a lot more destitute - I think - and whom I felt destitute in my ability to help - it took me being destitute - in a world that gets by fine without technology - to realize how useless almost all the technology I knew, was, in my situation. In comparison to the seemingly simple, yet foreign and out-of-reach customs of the community around me. I would love to join hands with those who feel the same pain and pressure as me to spread awareness of the life, culture and customs of those who are completely misrepresented - to those of us who really are poor in our humanity - and also who want to make technology practical and useful to those who stand to benefit from it the most. Which, in our bias, might seem like others. "The poor". But in reality, when it serves "them", it will serve us too, and better. We stand to learn more from those who we deem different. Who of us really really understands "equality"? What is equality? This is a call for help - to help me put technology to work to automate things that people do but that adds little or no value - that does little but "keep them busy" - ultimately at great hidden expense - to rescue counless lost generations - but to start small, and measured. This is a call for help to help me connect people to the information that they need in order to live the purpose they choose, with improved dignity and informed consent. In my current understanding, all the other goals will flow from dignity, understanding, and informed consent, and that should be front and center. We think we need to educate others... yes, we have some bits that are good. But it is each and every one of us that needs to be educated. By each an every one of us. And that can start literally anywhere. In fact, it starts with listening. Thank you for listening. Dagelf (talk) 13:50, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

#11 Sustainable Cities and Communities

We need to break down SDGs for the local level: SDG Handbook --Krabina (talk) 09:25, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

#10: Reducing Inequalities -> connecting people

An SDG that immediately appeals to me is #10, "Reducing Inequalities". It is really not difficult to discover inequalities on a global scale. What I would like to talk about now and here are the inequalities everyone of us encounters - or even elicites - in everyday life. One of the most sneaky dangers on all levels of society are prejudices - those biased opinions that arise in our mind in less than a second after seeing or encountering other human beings. They are coming up spontaneously, being fed by our origins in family, school and our daily consuming of information. The decisive point is: what do we make out of them? Do we just go along with them and don't check if they are right or wrong, in this specific situation? Or are we opening up ourselves for permanent reality checks by questioning our regular unconscious thoughts and habits? For me this means opening up myself to making connection with in principle every human I encounter – even in those ephemeral situations as commuting with tram and train, paying my shopping in the supermarket and so on. Not even words are needed for that; meeting of eyes can be enough. This went through my mind after listening to your keynote! One day later I watched participants of Stockholm’s nightly long-distance run Midnattsloppet. A young boy was steadily inviting participants to ‘shake-hands’, as can be seen on these pictures on Wikimedia Commons. To me this is a nice symbol of Reducing Inequalities in daily life! Petsoe (talk) 15:41, 29 September 2019 (UTC)