The latest step towards Bringing the Goals of the UN Home to San Francisco was for Bronwyn Galloway, President of Collective Communication, Inc, and Roger Eaton, Exec. Dir. of the same to request the Commission on the Status of Women (COSW) to put our project on its agenda for an upcoming COSW meeting. We arrived early and received a warm welcome from Board members and Department on the Status of Women (DOSW) staff. We each had two minutes, which is standard input time for members of the public at COSW meetings. Here's what we had to say:
Bronwyn
Hi my name is Bronwyn Galloway and I see more than a few familiar faces here. I was Chair of the San Francisco United Nations Association Women’s Committee until I was termed out a couple years ago. Now as President of Collective Communication, Inc, a San Francisco based 501c3, I have a request to make of the Commission on the Status of Women. Collective Communication has developed the Voices of Humanity online forum, which gives collective voices to women, men, youth, middle-aged, seniors and humanity-as-one. Gender and age equality are built in. We are going to use Voices of Humanity as a key part of our plan to persuade City Hall to create a UN Goals Advisory Committee. How do we do it? We build a civic / academic / business / government coalition. My request is that the Commission consider becoming an early member of the coalition. If you would add that item to the agenda of the February Commission meeting, that would be great. Thank you and I want to introduce our Executive Director, Roger Eaton, who will fill in some of the details.
Roger
Thanks, Bronwyn and a very good day to everyone here! We call our project “Bringing the Goals of the UN Home to San Francisco”. The UN Charter was signed at the Veterans Building on June 26, 1945. The Charter calls for an end to the scourge of war, so when we say the Goals of the UN, we are very much including peace and disarmament along with the awesome Sustainable Development Goals (the SDGs). As you are probably already aware, the UN considers the SDGs to be a package. The difficulty is that each goal is being pursued separately. How to foster planning “across the silos” is a major conundrum. A new feature of Voices of Humanity addresses this problem. We call this our “Together and Apart” collective conversations. First, all the participants from all the goals write and vote on messages about bridging the silos. Elected messages will address how to unify our efforts better. Then each Goal elects its own set of messages focused on its separate needs and so on back and forth, together and apart. The next step is to form an A-team to do outreach. We are aiming for a largely women’s A-team because we think that will get the job done faster and more smoothly. The men will follow. If you are interested and have the time to look into the details, please contact Bronwyn or myself via sfungoals.org. Our literature with contact info is on the table at the side of the hall. Those who take a closer look can help the Commission decide about joining the coalition at a future meeting. Thank you!
After the meeting I drove Bronwyn back to her office and we discussed how it had gone. We both felt delighted. To be sure, there is no guarantee that the COSW will add us to their February agenda but we are very hopeful they will. (December and January were already jam packed, so not possible.) Bronwyn decided she would be the first member of the largely women's A-team, and since then has already recruited a second member of the team. That is huge progress, and we very much hope to bring in the COSW to the nascent coalition in February.
Looking ahead, the possibility arises that the COSW might at least consider being the backbone organization for our projected collective impact project to build an impressive coalition and persuade City Hall to create the UN Goals Advisory Committee we are aiming for.
#SanFrancisco #California #un_goals #nvaction
