Lynn Creates Impact for the United Nations SDG Action Week
Dr. Antonella Regueiro
This year, the first week of Block B coincided with the United Nations’ SDG Action Week, an effort to engage people around the world with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Faculty, students and staff at Lynn University joined the effort through the Act Now Campaign, which sought to reach one million actions focusing on issues of sustainability and environmental awareness.
A total of 92 Lynn students, faculty and staff participated in this week of action and completed 2,813 actions, which collectively saved 3,403 kg of CO2, 357,000 liters of water, 3,091 kWh of electricity and involved 2,813 acts of kindness.
Actions performed included simple things like closing the tap while brushing your teeth or turning the light off when leaving the room, while also focusing on more invested issues like choosing sustainable fashion, changing light bulbs to energy efficient models and driving less, among others. In the end, Lynn University’s team helped the campaign reach its goal of one million collective actions with a final count of 3,830,506 of actions taken worldwide at the time of writing.
In Lynn’s classrooms, this initiative took a variety of forms. Dr. Anna Krift, teaching POL 203: Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution, had students join the campaign by downloading the AWorld app then designated time within the classroom to complete some of the challenges.
According to Krift, “the challenges were fun and interactive, and we all enjoyed participating.”
In a different field, Dr. Brittany Kiser incorporated this activity into EDU 317: Science in the Elementary School, when they “used the AWorld app to gain an understanding of the interrelatedness of human actions in relation to the environment. As part of the Lynn team, pre-service teachers logged daily habits, participated in learning journeys and activated challenges to learn how we impact nature.”
In the end, two students (Justine Answeeney and Shay Mahony) and one faculty member (Dr. Brittany Kiser) took the top three spots in the challenge.
