As the international community celebrates ‘Young and Future Generations Day’ at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, we are pleased to announce the launch of Generation 2030, a new space for the voices of students, youth and young professionals on the SDG Knowledge Hub.

The Future We Want – the agreement that UN Member States reached at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in 2012 – calls for “active participation of young people in decision-making processes,” recognizing that “the issues we are addressing have a deep impact on present and future generations.” This agreement set in motion the negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and following this advice will be crucial for reaching the future we want in 2030. Since the SDGs were adopted in September 2015, UN initiatives have highlighted the role of youth as “SDG accelerators,” and called investing in young people “one of the most effective, long-term and exponential investments” to achieve the Global Goals.

To bring the voices of “Generation 2030” more fully into the SDG Knowledge Hub’s information sharing activities, this new column will highlight areas where students and young professionals are actively engaging in the SDGs, and the issues on which they are seeking to have an impact. The column will feature news about youth innovations and activities and guest posts from students and young professionals, sharing their perspectives and insights on lessons in implementation, as well as promising linkages among the SDGs.

We invite students and young professionals to propose short (700-900 words) blog posts to be published on the SDG Knowledge Hub. We especially encourage case studies of SDG implementation or reviews of implementation data related to one or more of the SDGs. To explore this opportunity further, please contact sdgs@iisd.org.