Last month I wrote about purpose in your work life and introduced you to the UN Sustainable Development goals, also known as the Global Goals.

This month, I’m going to tell you about my favourite goals and why understanding them helps me in my work and personal life!

The goals were created in 2015 by the United Nations as a set of universal global goals to meet the urgent environmental, political and economic challenges facing our world.

There are 17 of them, and they cover all sorts of issues including poverty, health, climate action and equality.

If you look at them, I can pretty much guarantee that at least one will jump out at you as a passion of yours or a cause you’d like to get behind.

To illustrate this, I’ll talk about my favourite goals for the rest of this post:

  • 4: Quality Education
  • 5: Gender Equality
  • 12: Responsible Consumption and Production.

So, how do I fit these goals into what I do?

Let’s talk about quality education first. It’s about ensuring lifelong learning opportunities for everyone: access to education, removal of bias and discrimination in the curriculum, awareness of global citizenship, safe buildings and so on.

Because I’m passionate about this, I decided to volunteer as a school governor in Letchworth. It’s not only massively rewarding, but it’s teaching me so much about our education system and inequality locally and nationally.

As a female business owner, it’s obvious why I chose gender equality. Again, this goal covers wide-ranging subjects that affect women, including eliminating violence and discrimination, valuing unpaid care work more and ensuring full participation in leadership and decision making.

The world has already changed in my lifetime, but there’s still so much more to do. And as an auntie to two nieces, (hi Lottie and Rosie!) I want them to have the same opportunities in life as the boys in their classes at school get.

Working in sustainability, the environment is very important to me, so my third goal is responsible consumption and production.

Our planet has given us incredible natural resources, so we need to use them responsibly (currently we consume far more than the planet can provide).

This goal is about reducing food waste, using fewer chemicals, generating less waste, sustainable tourism and procurement processes in the workplace – lots to think about.

I buy second hand where possible, I don’t do business merchandise and I consider my travel arrangements, with online meetings where appropriate and public transport whenever possible: all really useful actions to cut my personal and business carbon footprints down.

To be honest, I love ALL the goals, so picking three was tough, but by having three as my focus, it helps me with decision making and identifying key related actions, so that I have a clear scope and sense of purpose.

I’d love to hear the goals that resonate with you – why not comment on this article, or share your thoughts on my Instagram account @sust.consulting, and I can focus on your favourites next month!