Growing from inside out – raising awareness on the SDG

At Nova SBE, we take our mission very seriously. Our impact-driven culture reflects daily on an entrepreneurial spirit that, regardless of who is involved and on what matter,our community will aim to impact the world. Yet, we soon acknowledged that the SDG language was not recognized by all of our community. We realized that to fully integrate an Impact Model that had an holistic and strong support and engagement by all our community, we had to start from the basics. To teach our community what the SDGs are, why was this agenda created and what do they mean for organizations, individuals and specifically for us.

SDG Workshops were organized by the Sustainability Hub. Luís Veiga Martins, today’s Associate Dean for Community Engagement & Sustainable Impact, challenged three members of our Faculty to join him in this mission - Ricardo Zózimo, João Loureiro and Daniela Afonso. Liaising directly with the HR, we managed to have 4 online workshops, divided into two separate sessions. The first aimed to introduce to the UN Agenda, provide a brief historical context and the business case for the SDG, and finally narrow down to the role of higher education institutions, and specifically Nova SBE. In the end of the session, all staff were divided into different heterogenous groups (ie. gender, job function, age) to brainstorm on potential ideas to be applied on campus. The second session kicked-off by sharing the main conclusions from all first sessions: insights gathered and ideas presented. The ideas were divided in three categories: “Why SDGs matter?”, “Nova SBE’s role to play” and “The school for the future”. Our team filtered the ideas presented in the first session to avoid repetition of those already ongoing, or already implemented. After acknowledging all ideas subjected to vote per category, everyone was asked to vote on their favourite ones.

The organizing team reached the final 6 most-voted ideas and is now working with each group that proposed them. Before presenting each to Nova SBE’s Executive Committee, our Faculty Team will mentor the groups to develop the ideas even further. The end goal is one: engage our staff and faculty to create meaningful and sustainable initiatives, directly contributing to the SDGs, that can be supported and implemented by Nova SBE.

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