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3 March 2021, Geneva, Switzerland - The year-long global fight to contain and eliminate the threat of SARS-CoV-2 overshadowed international efforts to achieve the SDGs of Agenda2030. The world needs the brightest minds to step into leadership roles at the forefront of the transformational change required to realize the ambitious goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In the field of science, technology and innovation, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Targets 17.6 and 17.8 respectively, aim to “enhance North-South, South-South and trian...
Crowd4SDG is a research project promoting citizen science initiatives with a focus on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Citizen science is a significant resource as it can both produce social innovation to achieve the SDGs and provide non-traditional data to track the progress made towards them. The project is steered by a consortium of partners with UNITAR responsible for enhancing policy relevance and usability of the citizen science data.
For its second GEAR (Gather, Evaluate, Accelerate and Refine) cycle, Crowd4SDG is supporting projects centred on Climat...
Merlyn Hurtado, Finalist of GEAR cycle II Climate Change and Gender Equality (2021) Paris, France We know that, globally, women hold over one-third of seats in local decision-making bodies. However, there is a lack of data on the participation of indigenous women in local decision-making. Merlyn, a research and data analyst at the Learning Planet Institute (University of Paris Cité), knows this issue first-hand. In Colombia, there are around two million indigenous peoples, according to the 2018 Census (IWGIA). However, their inclusion in decision-making processes ...
27 April 2023, Hangzhou, China - UNITAR’s 2021 and 2023 survey among the National Statistical Offices and Systems (NSOs and NSSs) and international organizations, conducted as part of the EC-Funded Crowd4SDG project, showed that 31% of respondents were aware of citizen science data (CSD) projects run by their NSOs in 2023 compared to only 17% in 2021. The awareness of citizen science (CSD) or citizen-generated data (CGD) is growing, and so are the questions on how such data could be collected and used for the monitoring of progress on sustainable development. To shed s...
On 27th May 2021, United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), which is a partner in the EU-funded Crowd4SDG project, organised a panel discussion “Unleashing the potential of citizen science data for monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” as part of the Crowd4SDG project. The panel had a two-fold objective – to disseminate emerging good practices among National Statistical Offices (NSOs) and National Statistical Systems (NSSs) on leveraging citizen science for monitoring progress on SDGs and related national and local level objectives, and to ...
6 April 2022 - This virtual side event organized by UNITAR, as part of the Crowd4SDG project, brought together passionate stakeholders involved with Citizen Science Data (CSD). Speakers shared their experience working with citizen scientists, as well as enabling the use of CSD by National Statistical Offices and Systems (NSOs and NSSs).
Ms. Hayoi Chen, Coordinator of the Inter-Secretariat Working Group on Household Surveys at the UN Statistics Division moderated this session and representatives from UNITAR, Office for National Statistics UK (ONS), the Dutch National Insti...
Citizen science data (CSD) presents untapped opportunities to track progress towards the SDGs offering multiple advantages for Governments and National Statistical Offices (NSOs): help fill in data gaps for indicators where traditional data collection instruments, such as, household surveys or administrative registers may not be well suited or may not have the sufficient coverage, improve the granularity of data and sometimes timeliness, and offer an effective and cost-efficient means for NSOs to address data needs of policy-makers in the context of limited or falling resou...
Over the past several years (2016-2022) UNITAR’s outreach to learners has increased significantly, including participants in learning events containing an objective assessment of learning. However, the proportion of certificates of completion (CoC) issued to these learners has declined. In 2023, the UN Board of Auditors observed this trend and recommended UNITAR to undertake an evaluation to uncover any factors driving completion rates. This evaluation assessed the effectiveness of UNITAR's learning-related programming, focusing on factors driving learner completion an...
21 October 2021, Geneva, Switzerland - During the 2021 World Data Forum (WDF), on the 6th of October 2021 in Bern, Switzerland, UNITAR, UN Statistics Division (UNSD) and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in collaboration with the Global Network of Institutions for Statistical Training (GIST), organized a hybrid session “Statistics and Data Smart: Innovative solutions for increasing statistical literacy of the general public”. Conversations focused on strategies and initiatives to improve statistical literacy of different stakeholders from childr...
Solomon Olusegun, Finalist of GEAR Cycle II Climate change and Gender equality (2021) Ibadan, Nigeria Solomon is pursuing a Bachelor’s in Psychology at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and nurturing his tech savviness by exploring different projects outside his field of studies. He has always been interested in learning more about the interaction between humans and the environment, including how humans experience climate change. This made him keen to join the Donate Water team during the GEAR Cycle II of the Crowd4SDG project that focused on Gender Equalit...