Last fall, participants in a major United Nations summit adopted a set of 17 goals aimed at a tall order: ending poverty, fighting inequality and injustice and tackling climate change by 2030.
Helping them in their efforts is a fledgling enterprise in Boulder, called 17, which will include, among other projects, a startup accelerator for social enterprises that address the objectives identified by the UN; they include such goals as "No poverty," "Zero hunger'" and "Good health and well being," along with 169 targets that need to be achieved to reach those objectives.
Ben Webster and Jason Neff (Photo: Joel Hartter)
"In effect, the world community is giving us 169 specific things we need to achieve," says co-founder Jason Neff. He's a professor in the environmental studies program at University of Colorado at Boulder and faculty director of Sustainability Innovation Lab at Colorado (SILC). Co-founder Ben Webster is SILC's managing director.
According to Webster and Neff, there will be three stages to the process. First will be bringing together academics and government officials with entrepreneurs and private sector players to build a new approach to addressing sustainability problems, one issue at a time. Thus, each gathering will focus on one particular area--say, water quality in Africa--examining the issues and identifying market opportunities for addressing them.
The other reason to hold these meetings is, "linking the knowledge community with the action community," says Webster "We're trying to galvanize the knowledge community to help inform business development." Meaning: While academics have done plenty of work examining the big issues affecting societies around the world, many of those findings end up going no further than the research lab. The gatherings, he hopes will provide a way for on-the-ground governments, corporations and nonprofits to cross-pollinate with university and foundation researchers.
The next step will be an accelerator, which will accept a class of 10-12 startups, all of which target one of the 17 issues. (Again, think water quality). The plan is for the first cohort to happen in 2017.
Last phases: linking the startups to partnerships formed by 17 (an NGO in Ecuador, say, or agency in New York City) and, finally, starting the whole process all over again.
At the moment, 17's structure is still being worked out. While it's a nonprofit, the accelerator portion might have a for-profit connected to it. That also will allow different types of organizations to invest in and finance various components of the process. Also, the founders are working to tap their networks to identify the best partners and look for funders. The plan is to develop corporate sponsors, linking accelerators to an area of interest, thereby providing those companies with access to innovative technologies. Example: A shipping company might want to back tech startups focusing on pollution issues.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) build on the Millennium Development Goals, eight anti-poverty targets adopted by a UN global committee in 2000. The SDGs and their associated agenda aim to address the root causes of poverty.
