About
Objectives of the Education4allSDGs application
This application is aimed at the general public, education and training professionals and managers in professions around the world where education plays an important role. It enables them, free of charge, to identify and assess the main contributions of an education project, policy or strategy to the 169 targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), using the Education4allSDGs methodology. These contributions are the concrete progress made towards achieving these targets as a result of the actions evaluated. The application also makes it possible to identify the SDG targets for which educational action prepares learners to take action.
It is aimed in particular at teachers themselves and at partners in the world of education and training.
The aim of Education4allSDGs is to enable a non-specialist in the SDGs to identify the main contributions of an action to progress towards the SDG targets. This application also helps to understand the wording and objectives of the corresponding SDG targets. In addition, it facilitates understanding of the 2030 Agenda and its systemic nature, making it easily accessible despite its inherent complexity.
Education4allSDGs does not offer a detailed analysis of contributions to the SDG targets, but prepares useful information for such an analysis, which can be carried out at a later date on the basis of the results of using this application.
You don't need to know the details of the 2030 Agenda yourself to be able to make an assessment in relation to its 169 specific objectives, known as the SDG targets. Education4allSDGs is a pedagogical and decision-making tool designed to help make better use of the SDGs and Agenda 2030 in education-related actions.
This application has been developed by SDG Champions France, a not-for-profit association that helps decision-makers to make operational contributions to the 2030 Agenda.
The Sustainable Development Goals are the global objectives adopted in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda. They are described in detail in the "The SDGs" tab in the top menu bar of this application.
The 2030 Agenda adopted in 2015 brings together 169 global objectives known as the SDG targets. It is described in the "The SDGs" tab, accessible via the application's top menu bar.
A breakthrough methodology
The complexity of the 2030 Agenda is a real difficulty that makes it almost impossible for a non-specialist in the SDGs to assess the relevance of a project, action or policy in relation to all the SDGs. This leads most professionals, even the most motivated, to consider only one of the SDG targets or, at the very least, a small number of them, which does not fully respect the ambition and systemic nature of the 2030 Agenda.
Faced with this difficulty, which was holding back the proper use of the SDGs by the community of water stakeholders, Gérard Payen devised the 4allSDGs methodology, which enables decision-makers to assess the relevance of an action in relation to the SDGs, without needing to know the details of the SDGs and, consequently, without needing to face up to their complexity.
This methodology enabled the French Water Partnership, with the support of an international committee of experts, to put a first application called Water4allSDGs online in March 2022. This application pre-identifies a large number of situations with positive or negative impacts on the SDG targets for projects, policies or strategies in the water sector.
The same methodology was used to create the Education4allSDGs application, which uses a system of scales to establish scores, SDG target by SDG target. These scores are not very accurate. Nevertheless, based on precise questions, they are much more 'objective' and reliable than the 'wet finger' estimates usually encountered in the education sector, estimates which very often do not even take into account the precise wording of the SDG targets and omit certain potential impacts of projects which are not easily identified.
This application gives concrete expression to the many interactions between SDGs by showing that an action in the field of education that contributes to progress towards a SDG4 target very often contributes to many other SDG targets outside SDG4. It also makes any negative impacts visible, paving the way for corrective or compensatory measures.
Cases have also been identified where educational actions on a particular theme prepare learners to take action to move towards achieving the SDG targets relating to that theme.
We are convinced that many users will want to improve certain aspects of this application. We invite all evaluators to contact us with their feedback and suggestions for improvement.
Acknowledgements
SDG Champions France would like to thank heartfully all those who contributed to the development of the Education4allSDGs application:
- Ms Jun Morohashi, Head of the Education to sustainable development section, and her colleagues Ms Julia Hess and Mr Mark Manns, UNESCO, Mr Alexandre Navarro, General secretary, et Ms Sonia Bahri, Advisor to the President, French National Commission to UNESCO and Ms Rebecca Akrich, Head of the Delegation to sustainable development, and her colleagues, Mr Philippe Senna and Mr Nordine Benhassain, CGDD, for their initial enthusiasm for the success of this project.
- Mr Gérard Payen, author of the methodology and vice-president of the French Water Partnership
- The organisations that made financial contributions: UNESCO, the Japanese Funds-in-Trust (JFIT) and the French Ministry of Ecological Transition.
- The French National Commission for UNESCO for its institutional support and its assistance in working with various UNESCO National Commissions.
- The members of the International steering committee to Education4allSDGS
- The pilot experts and members of the International Expert committee to Education4allSDGS from 10 countries on all continents who identified the many cases where an educational action has an impact on a SDG target. They thus contributed to building the Education configuration of the 4allSDGs methodology.
- XProjets, the École polytechnique Junior-Entreprise (France) for the creation and digital development of the application, and in particular Guillaume Chirache, Emre Ucar and Pierre-Efflam Pagès.
- The French Water Partnership, which has authorised us to use the 4allSDGs methodology and the Water4allSDGs application.
The SDG Champions France team