Education. Health. Safety. Girls’ and all children’s rights to these fundamental pillars are all under threat due to wars, political instability, economic roller coasters, and extreme weather. Things are getting worse – for everyone. Ten years ago, in 2015, the member states of the United Nations decided it was time to act.
Enter: the Sustainable Development Goals.
What are the Sustainable Development Goals?
The sustainable development goals, or SDGs, are a set of global goals developed by the United Nations to help address today’s most pressing challenges, in areas such as health and well-being, education, and equal rights for all. There are 17 SDGs in total:
Why should you care about these goals?
Today, girls’ and all children’s rights to education, health care, and safety are under threat:
- About 122 million girls are out of school.
- The number-one killer of girls ages 15 to 19 around the world is complications from early pregnancy, childbirth, and lack of safe health services.
- Every year, 12 million girls are forced to get married. They drop out of school and are more at risk of violence and unplanned early high-risk pregnancies.
- Today, more than 650 million women and girls worldwide were married as children.
- Nearly one in six girls and women live in a conflict zone.
Cuts to foreign aid mean that life-saving projects that help girls stay in school or that get clean water to children in crisis zones may stop or disappear completely.
Why do we need sustainable development?
So every child can go to school, so everyone has access to clean drinking water, and so women and men are treated as equals. The SDGs intend to do exactly that. Their aim is to help make the world a better place for girls, boys, women, and men by 2030.
When girls have access to education and economic opportunities, entire communities prosper. We have:
- Stronger economies: Every additional year of schooling increases a girl’s future earnings by 10–20%, helping break cycles of poverty.
- Better health outcomes: When girls complete their education, maternal mortality rates drop and infant survival rates improve.
- Community-wide benefits: Training women and girls in technology drives economic growth that can be sustained and that keeps communities competitive in a changing world.
Here’s what Plan is doing to help
The lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, escalating conflicts, geopolitical tensions, and growing climate chaos have severely hindered progress on meeting the SDGs.
At Plan International Canada, we know these challenges well and we tackle them every day. Eighty-three cents of every dollar from Plan Canada donors in 2024 went directly to programs that reach children and their communities worldwide:
We reached over 7 million people, including more than 1.6 million people in Guinea and Zimbabwe who received insecticide-treated mosquito nets to prevent malaria.