Evie Grouta
I’m Evie, I am a teacher and a project assistant in the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research. I am mainly involved in projects on peace education and history education. I am a dancer, a nature lover and a big fan of the arts and culture.
​
For me, Quality Education is a very important SDG, also because of my background and the work I do. I think that a lot of SDGs are related to education because it's a very important medium to communicate things, to give some guidelines on how to work for the other SDGs. Especially for young kids: If we are talking about sustainability, I think nothing is sustainable without thinking of how this translates to education. Like: what do we need to learn to support sustainable work? And also Climate Action. I mean Climate Change is real, even if a lot of companies deny it or a lot of people believe in conspiracy theories. So the longer it takes us to take real action the worse it gets. I think all SDGs are equally important, but to me personally these two aspects are even more important.
I think SDGs (as such) shouldn’t be something you have to get really interested in. Whatever people are interested in doing in their jobs or every day life should be a way to be incorporated in that. I think a lot of people would agree that we need all these things but if it feels like something they have to put a lot of extra effort in to achieve that [people lose motivation], although they are actually already working on that through other ways. So the point is [rather] for all sectors being aligned with it, especially through policies [than drawing people’s attention to the SDGs.] Of course you can spread awareness about all of these things through education, but maybe some things should be more incorporated in mainstream media, for example YouTube or television, but in interesting ways. For example having Youtubers promote this alongside other things, or understanding the implications of this in your everyday life.
To change something, to achieve something, you need to change things on many different levels, not just educating children about how to become better at saving water or etc. but also having these changes embedded in different aspects of life. Through politicians that make decisions that are in line with the SDGs, does the education support it, do the municipalities incorporate them…? Or even when doing an event: Is this in line with policies having to do with the environmental aspect? But it’s also important to understand things at a personal level. On the personal level, the community level, the government level. So it’s not just about focussing on one specific age group or level of the society, but it has to be incorporated in many different levels. Otherwise you’re doing something in one area and it doesn’t continue in the others. Since primary school we have been taught to save water, we are told to recycle and so on but if the government still supports large corporations that produce so much waste and damage the environment then this is not consistent.
For me everything that is related to the climate has a priority. Lately I have realized my ignorance about the goal concerning water and sanitation. I had no idea that the world is literally running out of water and I think I would choose that to tackle first.
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
I was watching a documentary on clean water and how it might become kind of a new currency and how poor people sometimes don’t have access and how all of that creates huge problems. So although we know that we should save water it doesn’t receive as much attention in the media as it should and we don’t talk enough about it.
Although some of these issues are discussed a lot, there are a lot of inaccuracies in these discussions or we discuss them in a wrong way.
So I think there is a lack of information despite things that academics, the public or policy makers already agreed on. We discuss the same things over and over again, but not actually the way they can be incorporated in our lives. The issue is that discussions don’t turn into policies and policies are not being implemented. So all of this can be very abstract and there are no clear guidelines.
At AHDR we mainly work on education and towards a culture of peace which translates to SDG 3 (Quality Education) and SDG (16 Peace, Justice and strong Institutions). This includes working on effects of conflicts like stereotypes, dicrimination, but also the understanding of peace in a broader sense: For example understanding your neighbour, being able to resolve a conflict in everyday life or respecting human rights. The work we do is related to history because sometimes all this discrimination and stereotyping comes from the way have been taught our history or our stories. Therefore we try to bring more sources to the fore, we provide teachers with education on how to tackle things and where issues from the past overlap with the ones from today. Like: What do I know now, why do I know it, what does my neighbor know that is different from what I know, and how can we come to terms with our present and past?