UN SDG:Learn is very glad to announce the launching of the Second Series of the UNSDGLearn Blog, "SMEs and the Implementation of the SDGs".

This Series will shine a light on Small and Mediums Enterprises (SMEs), their realities and the challenges they face as well as their philosophies, level of involvement and opportunities in regards to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This self-paced Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has been developed by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It aims to build the capacity of countries to foster policy coherence by anchoring the SDGs in the national budgets; develop nationally tailored approaches, apply best practices and tools to align budgeting with SDGs and national priorities, and enhance the Parliaments’ engagement.

A recent feature on the UN SDG:Learn platform now offers users a way to customize their learning experience!

A self-assessment provides an outlook on the users’ current knowledge and skills in regards to eight key competencies crucial to achieving the SDGs.

For its second GEAR (Gather, Evaluate, Accelerate and Refine) cycle, Crowd4SDG is supporting projects centred on Climate Change (SDG 13) and Gender (SDG 5). Participants are challenged "to develop a project that tackles these SDGs using crowdsourcing: information gathered or actions taken by large numbers of ordinary citizens", addressing some pressing issues.

Crowdsourced data, and more particularly gender and sex-disaggregated data, is extremely valuable as it can help highlight the gendered experiences of women and men facing climate change and fill in data gaps.

As part of an ongoing commitment to achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls, UNITAR has partnered with the Premier League, Premier League Charitable Foundation and Sport Relief to create ‘Changemakers,’ a leadership and empowerment programme for self-identifying young women and girls aged 11 - 18.

In its continued efforts towards the realisation of the goals outlined in the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda, UNITAR has joined forces with The Office of the Special Envoy of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission on Women, Peace and Security (OSE) through the secondment of a Gender Monitoring Specialist.

Did you know that when women participate in peace processes, the resulting agreement is 35% more likely to last 15 years? But did you also know that between 1992 and 2019, women represented only 13% of negotiators, 3% of mediators, and 4% of signatories in major peace processes? To combat the disconnect between these statistics, UNITAR has codeveloped with FemWise-Africa the Custodians for Peace project which empowers women with the skills and confidence to directly participate in peace processes.

Recognizing that women continue to face significant barriers to equitable and meaningful participation in peace operations, in November / December 2021, UNITAR and the UN DPO Justice and Corrections Service (JCS) jointly held an Assessment and outreach exercise for women corrections officers in Dakar, Senegal.

11 March 2022, Geneva, Switzerland - The Fischer Family Scholarship is an award of €5,000 granted to one student which has been admitted in the selection procedure pertaining to the Master in Electoral Policy and Administration (MEPA) program at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna. This scholarship is attributed to cover half of the tuition costs of the Master for the 2022 April Intake.

3 March 2022, Hiroshima, Japan - UNITAR Division for Prosperity is launching a two-week course on Introduction to Digital Health and Digital Entrepreneurship in Sahel Region. The online training will be delivered in French from 14 March to 25 March 2022. Women, youth entrepreneurs and medical practitioners are invited to learn skills, gain knowledge, and develop attitudes to help them adapt to and participate in the digitizing world and excel in digital health and entrepreneurship.