Communicating the SDGs in a Changing World

The SDG Summit will be a full day event on October 3rd, 2020, and will take place online, through the Zoom platform. This year’s theme is Communicating the SDGs. It will focus on how to communicate sustainability, navigating tough conversations and different perspectives, and how sustainability fits into various fields of studies. By attending, students and faculty members will be encouraged to become champions for sustainability in their local communities through workshops and panel discussions. This full day event will feature speakers, workshops, interactive activities, and a panel discussion.

Keynote: Kristy Drutman

Kristy (@browngirlgreen) will be hosting our keynote address this year. She is passionate about working at the intersections between media, diversity, and environmentalism. As a youth climate activist, Kristy has spoken in front of thousands as well as facilitated workshops centered around environmental media and storytelling in cities across the United States. She has also worked with youth from around the world to create collaborative, intersectional online media with the goal of creating conscious, culturally relevant content to engage audiences about proactive solution-building to the climate crisis.

Workshop 1: Gestures of Care: Performance Art as Sustainable Practice, Heather Leier

Description: Through this workshop, participants will be introduced to performance art as practice within the context of sustainable development. Participants will learn how performance art can be a valid mode of communicating the SDGs as well as well as putting sustainability into action. Together we will create a collective performance art piece which will employ gestures of care in relation to the SDGs.

Heather Leier is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Calgary where she teaches and learns alongside emerging contemporary artists. She has an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Alberta; she was the recipient of the Southern Graphics Council International Graduate Fellowship; Memorial University Grenfell Campus 2018 Students Union Teaching Award; and the University of Calgary Sustainability Teaching Award, 2020. Leier’s research-creation practice contributes to understandings of identity, gender-based violence, embodied trauma, and the ways in which these intersect with environmental crises. She is dedicated to placemaking within contemporary art through independent curatorial projects and her work as the Gallery Chair at Alberta Printmakers.

Workshop 2: Communicating Sustainable Education - Details coming soon!, Isaias Hernandez

Isaias Hernandez is the creator of Queer Brown Vegan where he makes accessible environmental education content. As a Queer, Brown, and Vegan environmentalist, he seeks to provide a safe space for other like-minded environmentalists to engage in the discourse of the current climate crisis.

Workshop 3: Sustainable Procurement and the SDGs, Jane Zhang

Description: Sustainable procurement is about tapping into the vast potential of the buying power of corporations and organizations to drive positive impact and change on the world, while simultaneously adding value back to the business. Learn the fundamentals of procurement and how they can be tied back to the UN SDGs as a strong measure for societal impact, with minimal change to today’s corporate operations!

Jane Zhang is the Co-Founder of ETCH Sourcing, a Canada based consultancy specializing in providing strategy and execution services in the sourcing, procurement and category management space. She loves people, solving problems, and has years of expertise working throughout the entire sourcing spectrum, from building and executing multi-million-dollar tactical strategies, to being entrusted with some of the most complex and strategic contractual negotiations on business-critical projects. Graduating from the Haskayne School of Business twice over with a Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing and an MBA in Finance with a focus on Global Energy Management and Sustainability, she has returned to build and teach business contract negotiations with her Co-Founder as a part of giving back and elevating her alma mater.

Jane’s latest passion is to champion the role of sustainability in procurement and is celebrating the launch of ETCH’s sustainable procurement offering, which integrates the UN SDGs as a sustainability function into the procurement process from an end-to-end perspective.

Agenda: Saturday, October 3, 2020

• 10:00 AM - Summit Begins
• 10:15 AM - Setting Intentions Exercise
• 10:30 AM - Keynote Address
• 11:00 AM - Break
• 11:10 AM - Workshop Round 1
• 11:55 AM - Lunch
• 12:40 PM - Workshop Round 2
• 1:25 PM - Panel Discussion
• 1: 55 PM - Break
• 2:05 PM - Synthesis Activity
• 2:35 PM - Summit Ends