31 July 2017: The United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) organization, together with the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), and partners, has developed training material to promote awareness and citizen ownership of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The curriculum supports tailoring the SDGs to local and regional development plans.

The UCLG course material contains four parts, covering: an introduction to the SDGs; awareness raising, advocacy and dialogues for the localization of the SDGs; aligning local and regional development plans with the SDGs; and monitoring, evaluation and follow-up. There are group exercises, talking points and background information about the differences between the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the SDGs. The material also provides links to online resources for both trainers and participants, such as articles and video content from the YouTube channels of UCLG, the ‘Global Goals’ and the UN.

The course material is intended for use in workshops with elected representatives and officials of local and regional groups and local stakeholders, such as civil society organizations (CSOs), the private sector and academia. It is most suitable for use with groups of 10-16 people and is freely available online.

Local and regional officials are important actors in the process of developing policies and projects aligned with the SDGs at the subnational level.

In the course material, UCLG explains the importance of local and regional officials in the process of developing policies and projects aligned with the SDGs at the subnational level. In one example of such action, Senegal’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development is collaborating with the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the World Bank on a ‘Sustainable Cities Management Initiative’, which seeks to build national capacity for promoting climate resilience in cities and developing sustainable industrial parks featuring renewable energy, resource efficiency, integrated waste management and parks. These efforts are expected to contribute to progress on SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities) and SDG 9 (industry, innovation and infrastructure). [UNIDO Press Release] [Publication: Localizing the SDGs]