Project Everyone: 10 Years of Impact

As we reach a decade of Project Everyone and the Global Goals, Richard Curtis, Director, Screenwriter & Co-founder of Project Everyone, takes a moment to reflect on how far we’ve come and look ahead at the road to 2030. 

It’s been our honour, and our job, at Project Everyone to try to make this unique plan accessible and popular. Our aim has been to make the SDGs, these Global Goals, crisp and clear and of practical use, to spread them far and wide, and – by making them more famous and user-friendly – to give them the best chance to be effective. Our work began before the Goals were even announced to the world. Our motto has always been “To make things happen, you have to make things” and over the last 10 years we’ve used creativity and partnerships to work to get the Goals to Everyone – that’s the Project.

The first thing we made was a design for the Goals – there are 17 of them with 169 targets and the original document was made up of many dense pages. In order for these to permeate into the imagination of people, businesses and governments, we wanted to distil this complex multilateral document into something that would fit onto one sheet of A4. We worked with the United Nations and our design partners, to create concise, short names for the Goals and give them a simple, ambitious, graphic shape.

Then came the next challenge – to launch them to the world. We helped do this alongside the UN; working with TV broadcasters, radio stations, mobile operators, Ministries of Education, 20 of the world’s top websites, and many, many more partners from all sectors, spanning over 100 countries and reaching millions of people.

And then the real work began – to keep the SDGs at the forefront of people’s minds. This decade has seen rising awareness and commitment to the Goals. Governments, working with the UN, have integrated them into their law-making. A huge number of businesses have embedded them as the basis for their decision-making – led by our Business Avengers for the SDGs. Launching the World’s Largest Lesson we’ve been part of making them central to millions of children’s understanding of how the world might fulfil its greatest potential. We also created Goalkeepers, a multi-year campaign launched in 2017 led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has created a worldwide community of leaders committed to achieving the Global Goals. Then, working with hundreds of civil society organisations and changemakers, we’ve put the Goals at the centre of thousands of practical actions happening across the world to fight for justice and equity and opportunity for all.

We all know we are not on track to meet the Goals by 2030: it has been a stormy and difficult decade. Yet, despite this, the Goals have survived robustly as the one practical plan for people and planet. Project Everyone continues to celebrate the SDGs, and is now working with ever more partners to leverage the deadline, and look at what’s been achieved and how to build on it.

The foundations have been set – policy environments are slowly shifting, businesses see huge opportunities in the Goals for employment and growth, and we now have the most idealistic and results-oriented group of young people in history to follow through with the Goals at the centre of their optimism and belief system.

No government has ever achieved everything it wants to achieve. No work of art is as successful as you hope. Our job now is to take full advantage of the 2030 deadline to achieve as much as we possibly can in each of the 17 utterly crucial areas laid out by the Goals. While 2030 marks a critical milestone, we know this vital work will continue beyond that date. We strongly believe these next years through to 2030 should be – and could be – a dramatically successful period of progress, setting the foundation for sustained advancement in the decades to follow.

I’d like to thank all the partners we have worked with for their support and courage, imagination and determination in getting us to where we are today. We’re proud to work alongside the UN whenever we can – and we look forward to continuing with all the hundreds of businesses, charities, leaders, campaigners, philanthropists and financiers across the world who move us remorselessly in the direction of the achievement of the Goals.

The SDGs are a roadmap towards the best version of our world. What better thing to do than work with passion and optimism to make that a reality?

Read the full report, Project Everyone: 10 Years of Impact here.