Data and the Sustainable Development Goals in Calgary

Join us as the Sustainable Development Goals are explained by Aatif Baskanderi and we explore how Data for Good members can participate in the development of the Calgary SDG Coalition digital platform.

Summary:

In the fall of 2015, the UN shared 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to help guide the global community in combating extreme poverty, inequality, injustice and climate change. As we each have a role to play in achieving these goals for a more prosperous, equitable and sustainable world, we are starting in our city - Calgary. As the SDGs are broad and all encompassing, we will need help from agencies, civil society groups, and private sector, and thus we have decided to work with our allies on SDG related projects. The Calgary SDG Coalition aims to:

• Provide greater awareness of SDG issues and their corresponding systems, including interconnections across issues and stakeholders

• Identify, celebrate and share best practices

• Uncover gaps to enable new activity and innovation

• Open up the ecosystem and identify opportunities for organizations and individuals to collaborate in existing activity or create new collaborations where there is a gap

The first step of this process is to open-up the ecosystem via digital platform development, #YYCSDG, to exhibit and enable engagement with the existing ecosystem. Features include to share issues, promoting activity, recognizing best practices and enabling networking specific to the SDGs in an open and transparent manner to identify and harbour an ecosystem. Key focus on user experience to ensure the platform is appealing, easily adopted, and utilized by all communities and organizations in Calgary. We will further discuss with the Data for Good community the best approaches in developing such a platform and how to best utilize data in the process.

Bio:

Aatif Baskanderi is a Newfoundlander who received both his engineering bachelor & innovation management master degrees at Memorial University, and a social policy & international development MSc degree at London School of Economics & Political Science. He has worked and volunteered his time with various engineering, government, and not-for-profit organizations across Canada, UK, and Sierra Leone. He is passionate about the potential of society for positive change through collaboration with a relentless pragmatic optimism. With lifelong interests in social justice, global development and STEM, volunteering with EWB was a natural fit… getting to about 10 years now. He currently works as a Commercialization Manager at Kinetica Ventures - Innovate Calgary, as well as serving as the Sustainable Development Goals Coalition Team Lead with the Engineers Without Borders Calgary City Chapter. His goal over the next year is to build collaboration across Calgary towards the SDGs, #YYCSDG. He also loves playing basketball/soccer/ball hockey, dancing, and nerding out on any topics with passionate people.