Below is a full list of goals along with clarifications for 3 of them, underpinning the Art of Freedom Foundation’s activities.
Sustainable Development Goals:
- End poverty in all forms everywhere.
- End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.
- Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all.
- Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
- Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
- Ensure access to water and sanitation for all through sustainable management of water resources.
- Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.
- Promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment, and decent work for all.
- Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation.
- Reduce inequality within and among countries.
- Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.
- Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
- Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
- Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources.
- Protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss.
- Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies, ensure access to justice for all, and build at all levels efficient and accountable institutions contributing to social inclusion.
- Reinforce implementing measures and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.
The Art of Freedom Foundation in its activities draws particular attention to the fulfilment of tasks and responsibilities relating to goals 4, 5 and 10: Ensure high quality education to all and promote lifelong learning, achieve gender equality, and empower all women and girls, as well as reduce inequality within and among countries.
Goal 4 of the Agenda for Sustainable Development states that achieving high quality education is central to improving people’s lives and to sustainable development.
Access to education for all improves quality of life, enables finding innovative solutions to the problems of today’s world like social exclusion or unemployment.
617 million young people from all over the world can’t read, write or count. And despite the fact that the ratio of the number of children attending primary school in developing countries reaching 91%, the remaining 9% constitute millions of young boys and girls deprived of the opportunity of any education whatsoever.
The quality of education is an aspect of equal importance. The lack of adequately trained teachers, poor learning conditions, unequal access to schools for children from rural areas all lead to the situation where even the children participating in lessons are having problems with reading and counting. The solution is to create education scholarship programmes, workshops for teachers, children, as well as build new schools and improve conditions at existing schools.
That is why local action is so important: improving conditions at schools, training leaders, and creating education programmes that give all children and youth equal opportunities, regardless of their sex, social status or place of residence.
Goal 5 commits us to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls in the world by 2030.
At present, especially in highly developed countries, significant progress can be seen in the matter of gender equality and empowerment of all women. Thanks to arduous work, girls and boys have equal access to education at primary level. One thing has not changed, however: practically in every part of the world women and girls are still being discriminated against and suffer abuse.
Gender equality is not just a universal human right, it is also the foundation for a sustainable world, the guarantee for peace, prosperity, and security. Unfortunately, at present, every fifth woman aged 15–49 years admits to have suffered physical or sexual abuse from their partner during the past year. Additionally, in as many as 49 countries there are no legal provisions to protect women against domestic violence.
Despite a significant increase in the participation of women in political life being noted, their percentage in national Parliaments only accounts for 27%, which is well below the parity. Women worldwide constitute a mere 13% of agricultural land owners. We can provide many more examples of inequality resulting from gender differences, also those taking place in Poland. We at the Art of Freedom Foundation are focused on real solutions and creating genuine opportunities for a better life.
Ensuring women and girls have equal access to education, healthcare, and decent work, and fostering their active involvement in the decision-making process in political and economic matters brings great benefits for societies and humankind. The implementation of new legislation concerning equality within the workplace and tackling harmful practices towards women are absolutely essential measures to bring discrimination on the grounds of sex to an end.
The 10th Sustainable Development Goal is to reduce disparities within and among countries.
Although the international community has so far done a great deal to lift people out of poverty, we can still see significant differences in access to healthcare or education, for instance, based on the place of living. The nations that are most vulnerable and exposed to inequality – the least developed, landlocked, and small island states – still face a vast amount of work to help lift their citizens out of poverty.
Decreasing income inequality between countries is an undoubted success, yet another phenomenon has become more acute, namely, income inequality within specific countries. Thanks to this, we now know that economic growth alone will not suffice to alleviate the scale of poverty. What is imperative is complete access to the three economic, social, and environmental pillars of internal economic growth. It is extremely important to show and teach children from poorer regions that they do not have to replicate the present way of life of their parents; that they too—should they so desire—have a chance for a better start in life into adulthood. Indeed, studies confirm that below a certain threshold, inequalities have detrimental effects on development and reducing poverty, and that there is a direct link between involvement in the public and political sphere and self-esteem and self-fulfilment.
In 1990-2010, income inequality in developing countries has grown on average by 11%. The vast majority of households (over 75% of the human population) live in societies where income is more unevenly distributed than in the 1990s. Globally, the level of social protection has significantly improved—yet, despite this, the probability of persons with disabilities bearing much larger healthcare costs than persons without disabilities is five times bigger.
The above figures illustrate that there is still much work to do, not only worldwide, but also in Poland, in terms of equality. The Art of Freedom Foundation is involved in striving to improve the living conditions of the local community and, in so doing, also of the global community, giving examples of good practices.