Several generations united in the ENCLAVE ODS forum: young leadership for sustainable development

Future projects start with small gestures, small initiatives. Several people united to help a friend. Neighbors working together to improve their neighborhood. Or leaders of countries that, under the umbrella of the United Nations, sit down to find a way to create a fairer tomorrow.

And that more inclusive and sustainable future is, as stated by Sergi Loughney, director of Institutional Relations at the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation, in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Precisely that 2030 Agenda was the protagonist of the forum Young Leadership for the SDGs: The New Changemakers, organized yesterday by EL ESPAÑOL and Fundación ‘la Caixa’ as a meeting point (and official presentation) of ENCLAVE ODS.

Tomorrow is drawn in one way or another depending on who is looking at that horizon. For many, millennials and Gen Z – that is, those in their twenties and thirties – represent the future of society, the labor market and companies.

These generations carry the 2030 Agenda unconsciously embedded in their DNA. And they are the ones who draw a sustainable tomorrow with their purchasing decisions and, increasingly, with its own business vision.

This has been demonstrated by the 17 young people who have participated in the series of interviews carried out by Rubén Fernández-Costa in this vertical. And what were co-protagonists -together with the SDGs- of the forum held at the CaixaForum in Madrid.

The president of Indra, Marc Mutra made it clear: “It is not the same to look at a mountain from below than while you are climbing it”. It’s necessary that the generations that now make up the business fabric of our country pay attention to these young people.

Because all of them – and those they represent – are putting all their will and attention on “one of the greatest challenges of our society: that development is sustainable, fair and inclusive”. With these words, Mutra emphasized the essential role that young people play in society, represented by these 17 changemakers or agents of change who give voice to the SDGs.

It is to these 17 women and men who have already become references in this fight for a more just world, and to all those anonymous young people who follow in their footsteps, who owns the future. As Pedro J. Ramírez, executive president and director of EL ESPAÑOL pointed out during the forum, “all of them emanate their own light, and it is that light that has to guide us” along the path of the 2030 Agenda.

And they do. At the time these lines are written, ENCLAVE ODS has published around 23,000 words. Each and every one of them destined to make sense of these United Nations objectives that should – if they do not already do so – form part of the daily life of those who seek to build a better tomorrow.

But what do a couple of tens of thousands of words mean in the ocean of information that we find? online? The moderator of this forum, Cruz Sánchez de Lara, editor of ENCLAVE ODS and vice president of EL ESPAÑOL, highlighted that the important thing is not the quantity, but the quality. And above all the message.

People, ODS, day and years have been the four words most used by the 17 young people changemakers who have occupied the Referents section of the vertical during the last weeks. Which, as Sánchez de Lara explained, “reminds us of a fundamental issue: the importance of committing ourselves to the times and not postponing this commitment for other generations.”

Because we are witnessing a peculiar situation. As Concepción Galdón, director and Lead Acad of Social Innovation at IE and co-founder of Puentes Global -and one of the young protagonists of the forum- asserted, “never have so many generations come together around the same concerns”.

Galdón reminded attendees how the pandemic is showing us that we do not live in “an era of change but in a change of era” that has been simmering for years.

And as he explained in the forum, sustainability is here to stay, but not as an empty word. “Companies are meaningless in the medium and long term if they are not sustainable at a social and environmental level ”, he assured.

In addition, Galdón reminded us of something that we forget too many times: “Companies do not exist, they are nothing by themselves: they are the people who make them up and who give them personality ”. In the same way that people evolve, so do companies. Something that social entrepreneurs like Antonio Espinosa de los Monteros, CEO of Auara understand perfectly.

At the end of the day, he explained during the forum, “to understand the person is to understand the world, the economy and how we work”. And those younger generations, who are now beginning to be the center of attention of companies, increasingly demand that the focus be placed on social impact.

“I want the eight or ten hours that I work, which is a total of 70,000 hours – most of the time we spend awake-, mean something, contribute “Espinosa explained. To which he added something that seems like a cliché, but that sums up the spirit of today’s twentysomethings and thirties: “We are a generation that understands that work has to have a purpose, and that is what we look for in companies.”

That way of thinking is not restricted to a few. Natalia López González del Rey, a doctoral research student at HM Hospitales, summed it up perfectly: “When I saw the interviews of the 17 published, I realized that we all think the same; each one from his plot, from what he can do, but the essence is the same, we have a common goal and we all do our bit to make the world a better place ”.

With the SDGs as a flag

But this common objective is not always materialized in joint actions. Hence the importance of communicate and raise awareness so that the 2030 Agenda is part of everyday life of citizens, and not only of companies and institutions. For Galdón, the challenge of the SDGs lies in the fact that “it is not so easy to humanize them so that everyone feels that they are part of them”.

Both in the professional and educational fields the focus is on training. “Companies have the ability, as they evolve along with society, to digest concepts such as those included in the SDGs and do pedagogy with their people, their workers,” reiterated Galdón.

Education – along with health, as we have seen with the pandemic – are the basis of progress. Something about which Galdón reflected: “Ias we live the digital transformation, we are living towards sustainability, and we must understand that we must be trained in it ”.

Because, as Espinosa warned, without the proper training, the one known as “greenwashing it could be perpetuated rather than just a quick response to a social trend. “

This grandiose concept that is nothing more than a sustainable facelift is, according to the young entrepreneur, “a symptom of a social demand, a change that requires several generations to settle, and that training and time will put in its place ”.

Millennials, the new consumers, have already begun to demand a paradigm shift from companies. “And the generation Z, which comes after, will do it even more, because they are still more aware,” López warned.

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