The Youth Climate Report honoured by the 2020 SDG Actions Awards

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2020 UN Sustainable Development Goals Action Awards honour those who MOBILIZE, CONNECT and INSPIRE

Winners and honourable mentions have been announced before the upcoming SDG Global Festival of Action awards ceremony, which will be taking place on a virtual basis from March 25th to 26th, 2021.

The 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) to transform our world:
GOAL 1: No Poverty  GOAL 2: Zero Hunger  GOAL 3: Good Health and Well-being  GOAL 4: Quality Education  GOAL 5: Gender Equality  GOAL 6: Clean Water and Sanitation  GOAL 7: Affordable and Clean Energy  GOAL 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth  GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure  GOAL 10: Reduced Inequality  GOAL 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities  GOAL 12: Responsible Consumption and Production  GOAL 13: Climate Action  GOAL 14: Life Below Water  GOAL 15: Life on Land  GOAL 16: Peace and Justice Strong Institutions  GOAL 17: Partnerships to achieve the Goal

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Action Awards acknowledge initiatives demonstrating significant impact, creativity, innovation, and replicability. In December of 2020, the UN SDG Action Award finalists were announced after over 800 projects were submitted. In January of 2021, those also making notable contributions, but ineligible for the award due to Government and/or United Nation affiliations, receive ‘Honourable Mentions’.  Watch Video

Honourable Mentions of the 2020 UN SDG Action Awards, which salute some of the “most transformative and impactful initiatives of 2020”, include:

Mobilizing youth to report on climate through the power of film 

The Youth Climate Report mobilizes under-represented youth to share their stories about climate using film and digital mapping technology. Over 450 films have been produced, of which 60 have been screened at several COP’s.

Dr. Mark Terry first created and introduced this GIS Map project to the United Nations Environment Programme in 2011. It is an evolving, multilinear, data delivery system to which students from around the world have contributed three-minute videos highlighting environmental issues in their community or country. Dr. Terry and the UNEP curate each video to ensure it meets the criteria of tackling that year’s one of two choices of environmental subjects on which to base their mini film. Dr. Terry is the first Canadian to receive such an honour from the SDG Action Awards and we hope to see more spotlighted for their efforts. See the ‘Happening To Us’ Trailer

 

Utilizing the latest app technology to increase SDG awareness and accelerate progress through individual acts of change

Samsung’s Global Goals app highlights how simple actions can build a more sustainable future for all. This app helps to increase awareness of the 17 Global Goals and their progress through individuals doing their part. The education and donation-based app connects millions of users to critical information about each of the Goals and how to easily make a difference. It is innovation and inspiration and a supportive atmosphere at your fingertips and has been downloaded to over 80 million Galaxy smartphones worldwide.

 

Making the Goals more accessible and relatable to people everywhere through creative media campaigns

The hit song ‘Let Me Be The One’ attached to the Be the One Campaign has reached over 21 million people. The leadership training program has been delivered to over 9,500 change-makers in 156 countries. “Making the Sustainable Development Goals more accessible, easy to understand, and relatable to people and organizations around the world has been a priority since their conception. Be The One campaign leverages creative media and partners up with artists and celebrities, in under-represented parts of the world, to shift the narrative and inspire localized ownership of the SDGs, globally.”

 

Driving SDG action through global sequential storytelling campaigns on YouTube

YouTube partnered with Tribeca Enterprises, the UN, creative agencies and filmmakers to develop Change the Sequence, raising awareness and action for the Global Goals by building impactful sequential storytelling campaigns on YouTube. With over 37 million views, this initiative demonstrates how brands are able to use creativity to build more equitable, sustainable, and inclusive societies. These effective global campaigns helped increase new visits to the site by 80% and traffic to the United Nations’ Global Goals website by 120% year-over-year.

UN SDG Action Campaign,    Facebook,    Twitter,    Instagram,    LinkedIn,    Youtube

We can all do our part to MOBILIZE, CONNECT and INSPIRE!

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Dr. Terry Panelist at York Int. Conference Jan. 20 to 22, 2021

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York International presents the ‘The Sustainable and Inclusive Internationalization Virtual Conference’ 

Dr. Mark Terry joins dozens of speakers who will address ‘Reimagining Approaches in Higher Education in an Era of Global Uncertainties’ from January 20 to January 22, 2021, from 8:15 am – 12:15 pm EST each day. 

The conference will be addressing the following themes:

– Sustainable and responsible mobility – new paradigm or just paradox?

– ‘All means all’ inclusive access to international exchange and collaboration

– Practical approaches to innovation in higher education practices of student and scholar mobility

The aim of the conference:

– Initiate a discussion with global perspectives on international education and sustainability (post COVID-19) by bringing together mobility experts and coordinators responsible for international services and exchange programs, as well as experts in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Global Citizenship Education (GCED) with policymakers and other practitioners

– Develop a Toronto 2021 York Declaration on responsible mobility in higher education: while recognizing the importance of international student and research mobility, higher education carries a responsibility to understand their impact in contexts of addressing both globalization and sustainability

– Contribute to the future of international education and sustainability in a new era of global uncertainties (post COVID-19)

– Bring forward international mobility discussions beyond student exchange to include innovative and inclusive global learning models and pedagogies whilst sharing a Canadian perspective(s) on internationalization and mobility

– Develop a strategy for ongoing networking and sharing in research and capacity building within the field that will extend well beyond the Conference”

Four panelists will be discussing ‘Greening student and scholar exchange: concrete ideas and practices’. The Parallel Session 2 will be held from 10:45 am – 12:00 pm EST / 3:45 – 5: 00 pm UTC. It will be chaired by Dr. Ravi de Costa, Chair of the President’s Sustainability Council, York University, Canada. “The international education community has been critiqued for its lack of recognition and action in relation to the environmental carbon footprint of its mobility programs. What are some current and/or future frameworks and practices that address this concern? How do exchange and internationalization activities align with the pursuit towards sustainability? What are the unspoken of (mental, emotional, and psychological) burdens that need to be addressed?”

The panelists: 

Dr. Mark Terry, Director Youth Climate Report, UNESCO Chair Associate, York University, Canada
Jana Dlouhá, Second Vice-Chairman of the Czech Commission for UNESCO, Charles University, Czech Republic
Dr. Judith Naidorf, Independent Researcher of CONICET, Institute of Research in Educational Sciences, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Dr. Tyrone Hall, Head of Communications NDC Partnership, World Resource Institute, The United States
  

Click here to see the rest of the program.

‘The Eden Magazine’ features Dr. Mark Terry, Jan. 2021

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The Eden Magazine features Dr. Mark Terry in its January 2021 issue highlighting his work as an explorer, filmmaker, scholar, journalist, and author. Read the entire article on MagCloud‘s site.

The Eden Magazine focuses on issues that are significant to all people on the planet and the general ecology and health of the planet. It is firmly grounded in what we need to do to make life better for all of us. They state that: “Eden Magazine’s goal is to promote inner change, and thoughts through educational tools to acquaint us with our world.” Just as Dr. Terry reaches millions of people through film and video, this international environmental publication has over 2,000,000 print version subscribers just in America and reaches many more worldwide via various media. Both Dr. Terry and The Eden Magazine share stories and regarding climate change and the environment and what we need to do to adapt to this and to change our behaviours to improve the ecology of the planet and our lives.

Dr. Mark Terry in the Dominican Republic with plastic riverIn this feature article, many photographs are shared along with Dr. Terry’s answers to questions regarding himself and his career, various projects he has embraced, exploring different regions of the world, working as a documentary filmmaker which lead to working with the UN and supplying policymakers with film projects as well as his evolving documentary project entitled ‘The Youth Climate Report’. Dr. Terry also discusses teaching, writing the books, The Geo-Doc: Geomedia, Documentary Film, and Social Change, and Pandemic Poetry in 2020 and upcoming endeavours for 2021.

Dr. Mark Terry’s book ‘The GeoDoc’

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In February of 2020, Dr. Mark Terry had his book released through Palgrave-MacMillan to rave reviews: ‘BookAuthority’ includes Dr. Mark Terry’s book ‘The GeoDoc – Geomedia, Documentary Film and Social Change’ as one of the 5 Best New Documentary Film eBooks To Read In 2020.

On their page entitled ’47 Best Documentary Film eBooks of All Time’, they write: “This book introduces a new form of documentary film: the Geo-Doc, designed to maximize the influential power of the documentary film as an agent of social change. By combining the proven methods and approaches as evidenced through historical, theoretical, digital, and ecocritical investigations with the unique affordances of Geographic Information System technology, a dynamic new documentary form emerges, one tested in the field with the United Nations. This book begins with an overview of the history of the documentary film with attention given to how it evolved as an instrument of social change.

It examines theories surrounding mobilizing the documentary film as a communication tool between filmmakers and policymakers. Ecocinema and its semiotic storytelling techniques are also explored for their unique approaches in audience engagement. The proven methods identified throughout the book are combined with the spatial and temporal affordances provided by GIS technology to create the Geo-Doc, a new tool for the activist documentarian.“
 
In Dr. Terry’s book, he talks about The Youth Climate Report, a project he created and maintains in conjunction with the UNEP, which is a temporal, locative, evolving new form of a documentary film which he pins 3-minute videos submitted by students from around the world that examine climate change and other environmental issues. Mark’s book explains how this data delivery system was adopted by the UNEP to inform policymakers of issues through the GIS map platform which houses videos, reports, photographs, metadata, location, and more.
 

Dr. Mark Terry inducted to the Royal Society of Canada

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Congratulations to Dr. Mark Terry for officially becoming a member of the Canadian Royal Society on Friday, Nov. 27th, 2020.

The honour was bestowed upon Dr. Terry due to two main areas of focus. Dr. Terry was first invited by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2009 to screen his film, ‘The Antarctica Challenge-A Global Warning’, at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at COP. It was the only environmental film screened to delegates and policymakers that year and helped informed them about critical issues, regarding climate change. The UN then asked Mark to make a film about his findings in the Arctic and provided him with a list of subjects to cover. He answered with ‘The Polar Explorer’ which was screened to delegates and policymakers again at COP. Mark was able to sit down with policymakers and was instrumental in getting rising sea levels tabled as an issue to be addressed around the world.

Mark’s next project was to create the Youth Climate Report, in which he invited students between ages 19 and 30 to create and submit a 3-minute film exploring aspects of climate change and environmental issues. Mark then created a customized GIS map in which he pinned each of the student videos along with metadata, photos, locative details, and links. By adding new student submissions each year, which are juried by Mark and the UNEP, he created a new multi-linear, temporal, locative, evolving form of a documentary film, which was adopted by the UN as a data delivery system. comprised of the student videos, called a Geo-Doc.

The UN and educators around the world are embracing this platform to share information, in a video format as it is such a direct method to convey information and can be more effective than reading reports.

As his project to complete his Ph.D. Mark used the Youth Climate Report project as the basis of his thesis. The result was the book called ‘The Geo-Doc: Geomedia, Documentary Film, and Social Change’ which was released in 2020 by Palgrave Macmillan.  The same year Mark released a book called ‘Pandemic Poetry’ full of reflections on the COVID19 pandemic and its effect on individuals and society.

Mark has also addressed people around the world on many aspects of climate change at numerous conferences, and this also led to him becoming a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has a number of other accolades including the Queen’s Royal Jubilee Medal, a Canadian Gemini Award, and the Steffanason Medal awarded by the Explorer’s Club, of which he is a member.