Nora Altwaijri is committed to activating youth to contribute to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Nora Altwaijari is a true believer in mutualism. She is committed to giving back as much as she gets from “the universe, the world, and to people”. As someone who feels true responsibility toward the environment, she has always been dedicated to constructing paths of service for herself, and now she is being intentional about making sure to build these paths wide enough so that other people can make their way down them as well. Promoting sustainability might feel amorphous and laborious to some, but for Altwaijari, the task feels both attainable and exciting. She hopes to spread hope to young people, so they too, can feel like change is within reach.
Altwaijari acknowledges how contradictory she appears to others. Born and raised in Saudi Arabia, she has yet to get used to the disbelief that flashes across peoples’ faces when they meet her. Her confident words, along with her exuberant aura, contradict the naive assumptions people make about her when they attempt to reconcile the indoctrination imposed on them by the media with regard to Saudi women. Altwaijari points out the growth happening around her in Saudi Arabia—progress that has made space for her to speak openly about the importance of sustainability. Altwaijari also comes from a software engineering background and is currently working in management consulting, but above all she is committed to inspiring young people to be changemakers, and passionate about sustainable development.
This intrinsic fervor was originally ignited in her when she learned about some of the UN’s initiatives while in university. As a student, she joined a program for youth leadership development where members were given topics to choose from in order to create a project that would help the community. When she looked at the list of the topics, she noticed one that piqued her interest. That topic happened to be the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “I had no idea what they were,” she remembers. “When I looked them up, I was really shocked that we really have this agenda that tells us exactly what’s wrong and how we can fix it. The agenda provides detailed steps. It explains the incremental targets, the large, overarching goals, and what each country has to do. It describes how each individual can contribute. That was fascinating to me. So I decided to choose that topic.”
Altwaijari went on to meet other people who were also passionate about the SDGs, and together they decided to gather information about their community. She listed some of the questions that she and the other people she worked with had: “Are young people in our community aware of the SDGs? Are they activating any of the goals and reaching any of the targets? Are they contributing to sustainability in one way or another?” In order to answer these questions, Altwaijari and her peers created a survey that they distributed locally to approximately 600 young people. She was shocked by the results. Altwaijari found that almost everyone was contributing to the SDGs in one way or another and achieving progress towards sustainability, regardless of their awareness of the UN agenda. In 2020, Altwaijari and her peers did a statistical study on the population in Saudi Arabia and realized that 67% of their population was younger than 35; the youth community was the largest it had ever been in the country. Despite the fact that this group of people lacked insight and access, they had a lot of energy around sustainability that hadn’t been tapped into yet, and thirsted for more knowledge. This inspired Altwaijari to build a bridge between the agenda she had come to appreciate and the people who were waiting for support and direction to channel their energy. She asked herself, “How can we educate people and give them the means to contribute towards their city?” From there, the idea of the Sustainable University Initiative was born.
The Sustainable University Initiative is a platform that aims to educate global youth about the importance of the SDGs and raise awareness of the global impact they are creating around the world. Students will be able to have access to detailed information on what work other countries are doing to further accomplish the SDGs, giving them a sense of scope. The platform seeks to empower young people to contribute in both small and large ways to achieving the goals. “If you want to contribute to the environment, but you don’t know what action to take, we’ve got a place on the platform that shows you all of the contributions that you could participate in. For instance, you could plant a tree on your campus,” Altwaijari explains. “Every contribution is assigned a number of points that students receive once they’ve completed their contribution and submitted proof. These points will be added together to create the cumulative score for the university they belong to. The university that has the highest score will be titled The Sustainable University for that academic year. The university will benefit from the reputation, and at the same time we will have activated the youth.”
Altwaijari has used her background in tech and engineering to create the platform’s website. The entire project has been collaborative from the start; she has leaned on her peers to use their own skills to enhance their project and is continuing to strengthen the platform. She hopes young people around the world will see what is possible through dedication, passion, and collaboration. When thinking about the barriers to success, Altwaijari mentions how important community is. Mutual dependence is necessary for the success of this platform and for the wellbeing of society and the Earth. “We really need authorities to take part in this work,” she emphasizes. “We really need universities to be invested in it. We really need them to offer the opportunities to their students and try to encourage everyone to participate in the platform. We also need to expand awareness to those in the community who know nothing about SDGs.”
Sustainability isn’t a challenge for one person to take on; it is the responsibility of all. Getting the participation and investment of all global citizens might sound impossible, but not to Altwaijari. She is steadfast and hopeful. “I believe in us. I see people taking action. I see people eager to play a role. We’ve got support. And speaking of my own community and my own country, we have support from the highest person in the nation to the youngest kid. You can feel this energy, this drive to strive for change and excellence. When I see what is being done all over the globe, it just blows my mind. We can do so much with creativity, community, and passion. We can spread it. We can save the earth with it.”
When one focuses on this energy, ingenuity, and dedication, it’s hard not to be excited with Altwaijari. If we all keep our eyes on what is possible and work together to take risks and forge new paths that create access and reveal the opportunities that are out there for people to live more sustainable lives, even if it’s only during the moments we have after we work our fulltime jobs, we will all be a little closer to enjoying the future we are all hopeful for. Let Altwaijari’s hope ignite yours.
Photo by Scene Studio.
