This article is written by Amaani Jinadasa and edited by Rianne Doller

Icare sustainably International has organized 2 programs for the Sustainable Development Goals Global Week of Action. With the pandemic being around, we organized our programs to be online. You can find our pledge on the official website of the Global Week of Action here.

The first program is “SDG Webinar and Mini-Project Program” and the second is “SDG Post Contest”. 

1.1. Quick overview important dates for the 2 SDG projects:

• 1 September: Close sign up webinar
• 4 September: Webinar on the SDG & Mini-Project plan
• 17 – 26 September: Social Media Post Contest
• 18 t/m 26 September: Global Week of Action
• 27 September: Reveal winners post contest
• 28 September: Deadline project reports
• 8 October: Award ceremony and reveal mini-projects e-book

2. What is the #Act4SDGs global week of action?

Global Goals Week is the:

“Annual week of action, awareness, and accountability for sustainable development goals” (United Nations Foundation, 2021).

This year, the week is from 18th to 26th September. During this week partners across civil society, business, academia, and the UN system commit towards accelerating actions on SDGs. You can find information on the week on the website of Act4SDGs, the organizers.

3.1. SDG Webinar and Mini-Project Program 

Icare will host a webinar explaining SDGs, importance of SDGs for youth leadership, how to conduct mini-projects covering an SDG reaping benefits to participant’s society and how to write project reports on the 4th of September. You can sign up for the webinar here: sign up.

Following the webinar, participants will select a project of their choice covering an SDG which they will conduct individually, in a group in household level, neighbourhood level, school/university level, or organizational level within 3 weeks. Icare will assign a mentor for each project to assist participants on how to conduct the project, how to fundraise, and how to write project reports.

All project reports will be collected on 28th September and will be featured in an e-book. All participants and their team members who successfully complete the projects will be awarded a certificate during the award ceremony on 8th October. The e-book containing all project reports will also be published during the award ceremony.
This program is intended to give all participants first-hand experience in managing charity projects. Also, the society will reap many benefits through the mini-projects conducted by participants, especially those close to participants. Seeing the participants conducting these projects will trigger a liking in peer groups and close contacts to conduct similar projects, creating a ripple effect.

Conclusion: Outcome of our projects for the global week of action, #Act4SDGs

We hope our projects for SDG week of action will contribute towards achieving SDGs during the pandemic where targets for global goals are slipped off track. These projects will also be of a motivation and a change for people living amidst lockdowns and travel restrictions to engage in a positive project. 

Follow our social media for updates.

A case-study of COVIDiSTRESS project and Icare Sustainably’s contribution

This article is written by Amaani Jinadasa, Carolyne Nyarangi, Rianne Doller from Icare Sustainably International together with Sara  Vestergren, lead researcher of the COVIDiSTRESS project. 

Icare publishes regular articles on COVID-19 and how we can limit long-term negative impacts of the pandemic on development. Find other articles on the topic here. 

1. Introduction: What is the COVIDiSTRESS research project? 

2. How global research projects contribute to reaching the SDGs

One of the key SDGs is number 17, partnerships to achieve the goals. This specific SDG is added to the list to emphasize the importance of collaborations and partnerships to reach the SDGs. One reason for that is to have an equitable distribution of responsibilities, where countries with more means contribute to those with less (Alan Pierce, 2018).

There are several reasons why partnerships are crucial, among them global macroeconomic stability and the sharing of knowledge, money, and access to technologies for development (Eurostat, 2021). Some countries or regions have more resources for development and overcome stressors than other countries and regions. This has become even more clear during the pandemic. It will become apparent in the coming years that partnerships and sharing resources will be as vital to deal with the consequences of the pandemic as they are to reach the SDGs by 2030. COVID-19 has made the challenge of reaching the SDGs by 2030 harder. It has already been clear that COVID-19 has put progress on the 17 goals back with centuries, hitting the poorest and most marginalized people most (Min & Perucci, 2020). Research on the exact consequences of the pandemic on development is still ongoing. The COVIDiSTRESS’ research is one of  the many initiatives.

Therefore, to keep with the motto of the SDGs to ‘leave no-one behind’, partnership are vital to ensure equitable development for all regions and people in the world, prior, during and post the COVID-19 pandemic. But what is necessary to have successful partnerships?

2.1 Challenges to organize global partnerships 

The main challenges in organizing projects like the COVIDiSTRESS is logistical challenges to convene and plan large-scale collaborative projects. Also, it needs time to get to know and to familiarize yourself, with cultural differences in working and time zones, language barriers, different access to technology, and working cultures. So a global project might require more time in the planning phase to ensure a structured workflow. 

COVIDiSTRESS has managed to navigate those challenges, which is shown in the number of articles, studies, and publications based on the COVIDiSTRESS-2020 study (find a list of the articles here). Along with the great numbers of current collaborators in the COVIDiSTRESS-II project, which currently stands at 145+ from all over the world.

The open-access database of the 2020 study and of the ongoing study will be a major source for researchers and global policymakers alike to have a more informed approach to pandemic-related policies. Hopefully, this will motivate people-centric solutions to respond and recover from the pandemic. Additionally, solutions have the ability to be grounded on real-life local experiences on the pandemic because of the database of knowledge created through the study. 

COVIDiSTRESS-Ⅱ brings together great global scientific minds who focus on analysing the database gained through the survey with the background of their own respective expertise. Some topics are: 

• Understanding people’s reactionary behaviours

• Internal survival mechanisms to the global pandemic

• How primary and secondary psychological stressors contribute to the vaccine resistance or acceptance of individuals

• The general attitude towards bodies like WHO and the various government institutions.

3. How did participants of COVIDiSTRESS view the collaboration?

A project’s success depends on the people involved in it. How did participants of the COVIDiSTRESS experience the collaboration? And what can we learn from that for global partnerships to accelerate the SDGs? In this chapter we both give an overview of Icare’s contribution and that of other global participants.

We gained the view of participants through a survey conducted by Icare.

3.1 Input of Icare Sustainably International to COVIDiSTRESS 

This is Dr. Sara Vestergren, lead researcher of COVIDiSTRESS, her remarks about Icare’s contribution:

For the COVIDiSTRESSII project, the Icare Sustainaby Network was crucial in getting access to several areas of the world that otherwise would be difficult to reach. Even though there is a lot of work behind leading a large-scale international project, the rewards greatly outweigh any negativity. Getting the chance to work with such a diverse team of collaborators, from various disciplines with various experiences, has been amazing. The advantage of being such a large team, and having already established organizations such as the Icare Sustainability Network, is that there is always someone willing and able to help when needed. For example, we wanted to set up a webpage for the project, and Rianne from Icare immediately stepped up and quickly helped. I think that the COVIDiSTRESS collaboration, and the involvement from Icare Sustainability Network, has really shown how we can collaborate across all borders including colleagues who do not often get a chance to work in international, or large projects.

 

3.1. Quotes on being part of global research project COVIDiSTRESS from participants

We got some narration of the experiences from some Icare team members and other team members of the larger consortium through a short survey conducted by Icare. The aim of the survey was to understand how we can turn the COVIDiSTRESS experiences into lessons for future projects to organize partnerships even more effectively. 

Below are quotes from the participants in the project describing their experiences participating in COVIDiSTRESS.

I got to know about the COVIDiSTRESS through Carolyn. My team and I participated in Sinhala translations. I was able to contact a few other friends to set up a Tamil translation team as well. It was a bit hectic managing two teams with the final project of my degree going on. Even though our team finished the translations on time, we had to make changes to the survey twice before confirming Sara everything is good to go.

-Amaani Jinadasa (Trainee Icare), Sri Lanka

I learned patience and how to never give up.

-Shanthakumar Saberjah (Icare), Sri Lanka

It is interesting to work with people with such different backgrounds. It really helps to think beyond your own experience level and to push emphathy and understanding for yet-unfamiliar people and cultures.

I created the website of covidistress.com. It was good to contribute to gain experience. I’ve learned a lot about how to combine research and everyday life experiences.

-Rianne Doller (Vice President Icare), the Netherlands

It has been a good experience, especially since Sara has coordinated it really well. It must be difficult to have a good overview of so many countries, but she has managed really well. Such excellent coordination is important in such a large project.

-Contributor from Norway

Working on this large-scale project has broadened my skill-set as a researcher by allowing me to contribute in my areas of expertise while learning from those who have expertise in other areas. In addition to being part of influential research, it has been fun to connect with colleagues internationally. Most importantly, we are generating a rich open-source dataset, which increases the research transparency and the potential impact of this project.

 

COVIDiSTRESS is an excellent model of inclusive collaboration, as we have recruited researchers from diverse backgrounds globally. Giving each researcher the flexibility to join teams within their area(s) of expertise allows for efficient collaboration and a sense of project ownership that promotes productivity. In addition to the role of the Consortium, institutions can promote these types of collaborations by giving credit for work done on large teams of this nature. One well designed dataset with 173,000+ responses is more valuable than 1000 datasets with 173 participants each. To efficiently obtain data of this caliber, a large team of researchers is needed, with each member making significant contributions that should result in appropriate credit at home institutions.

-Angelique M. Blackburn, the United States

4. Conclusion: tips from COVIDiSTRESS to achieve SDG17, global partnerships

COVIDiSTRESS project is now in the data collection phase. The survey is open for people from around the world to share their experiences amid Covid-19, helping researchers design future crisis management plans with more consideration to people’s psychological needs. The survey is open until the 8th of August and can be found here. Though the participants do not feel they are having a direct return investing their time in the survey, their contribution is immensely valuable for the future.

Mousavi et all. identifies many stressful events for people during the Covid-19 pandemic in their study  (Mousavi,  et al., 2020). Every person living through the pandemic has suffered from at least one of these stressful events listed under the categories. The future world will be utterly grateful if we develop proper strategies using the data collected from the COVIDiSTRESS project to address pandemics and other global disasters in a much more mental-health-friendly manner.

COVIDiSTRESS is a collaborative project of many individuals from around the world. The management method used in this project can be utilized to handle SDG projects of the same scale successfully. COVIDiSTRESS laid the foundation for globally inclusive projects. We can use the suggestions and ideas of the collaborators on this project to make future projects even more inclusive and effective. And hopefully, we will have increasingly better tools, knowledge, and mechanisms to use the resources we get through global collaborations in an efficient and effective manner. One thing is clear: global partnerships are vital to reach the SDGs by 2030.

To conclude this article, we have summarized the recommendations from the participants:

1. 1. Part of the planning process should be scoping the means and capacities of everyone you want to be involved with the projects. And to make a deliberate strategy to involve everyone. This can be from background experience or knowledge, to access to technology and internet data.
   2. Create more initiatives like COVIDiSTRESS and spread the news about it
   3.  Because of overlap in languages with national or regional differences some translation teams overcomplicated the process. This resulted to results that could have been better. A bit more guidance on that next time is needed.
   4. Actively recruit talented early-career researchers from countries that are often not well represented. This will give them the opportunity to participate in a big project and will also increase the reach of the project
   5. Encourage participating researchers to share with their friends, as Sara has already done so well
   6. Recognize the importance and potential of generating huge open-source datasets, such as created by COVIDiSTRESS. With global cooperation it is possible to have one dataset with 173.000+ responses instead of 1000 datasets with 173 responses.  The potential of global cooperation in that sense is enourmous.