10 March 2017: The fourth Global Partnerships Week brought together representatives from the US Government, international organizations and civil society to discuss the role of partnerships in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular Goal 17 (partnerships for the Goals).
GPW2017 took place between 6-12 March 2017, in Washington, DC, and was coordinated by the US Secretary of State’s Office of Global Partnerships at the US Department of State, the US Global Development Lab at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Concordia, and PeaceTech Lab for Global Partnerships Week (GPW) 2017. GPW2017 kicked off on 6 March with a Global Partnership Practitioners Forum and continued during the week through a number of workshops, trainings and other events.
At the start of GPW2017, the US Secretary of State’s Office of Global Partnerships released its annual ‘State of Global Partnerships Report.’ The report highlights 17 partnerships, one for each SDG, that the US Department of State and the USAID have recently built and implemented to advance the SDGs.
During GPW2017, the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announced a new partnership to advance the creation of appropriate digital solutions to achieve the SDGs. Through this partnership, which was launched on 7 March 2017, DIAL, ITU and others will work during the coming year to convene the public sector, private industry and development organizations across sectors to collaborate on co-design initiatives, promote industry dialogue, and execute high-level events and innovation challenges to drive information and communication technology (ICT) innovation. The DIAL partnership brings together USAID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Swedish Government and the UN Foundation, among other actors.
The Secretary’s Office of Global Partnerships at the US Department of State has also recently announced that it has joined forces with Unreasonable Group, which supports entrepreneurs seeking to solve global challenges at scale, to launch a new partnership called ‘Unreasonable Goals.’ This partnership will annually bring together “highly profitable entrepreneurs with cutting edge technologies that can measurably dent the Global Goals” for a two-week program, through 2030. The first such meeting will take place in July 2017. Each meeting will gather 17 highly scalable entrepreneurial solutions for the SDGs. The 13-year partnership is expected to work with over 200 entrepreneurs. [Global Partnership Week 2017 website][GPW2017 events][State of Global Partnerships Report][DIAL Partnership announcement][Unreasonable Goals website]