Multilingualism and the Sustainable Development Goals -- Many Languages One World (MLOW)

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday III)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Critical pedagogy for sustainable education

Proposal

Multilingualism and the Sustainable Development Goals -- Many Languages One World (MLOW)
Education for Sustainability/Sustainability Education
In addition to being quintessentially interdisciplinary, education for sustainability is centered on developing a new mindset and/or worldview in the learner, along with the skills needed to create and implement action plans to make our environment and society more fair and just for all, thereby creating sustainable communities.
This is the type of social and environmental sustainability that is the focus of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the heart of the UN global development agenda 2015-2030.
However, sustainability also extends to businesses and organizations in two manners, the first being that they – like individuals and communities – conduct themselves in a manner conducive to sustaining the environment and the community.
In addition, business and organizations also need to consider their own sustainability, and the strategies and practices that they themselves need to adopt in order to remain sustainable, and while these include environmental and social goals, they may also extend to management, marketing, finance and R & D. – and better yet, integrate the two. These organizations may adopt practices and structures that go beyond those generally considered as part of corporate social responsibility. Based not only on factors like energy use, these sustainable companies and organizations will strive for diversity at all levels, and will develop compensation structures diminishing the difference between the executive level and average employee compensation.
Any serious conversation on diversity will include a host of factors, but linguistic and cultural diversity is not only the hallmark of a sustainable company or organization, but encourages divergent thinking and creativity through the multiplicity of viewpoints present at the table in a diverse team.

Many Languages One World – Multilingualism, Sustainability, and Global Citizenship
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are at the heart of the United Nations global development agenda, and education for sustainability and for sustainable development plays an essential role in achieving the goals.
Like all education, education for sustainability should begin at a young age and continue, with increasing degrees of complexity, throughout formal education and throughout life.
Multilingualism plays a significant role, not only providing the earliest opportunity to education a young child through his/her mother tongue in a multilingual education setting, but it also provides a framework for receiving information from multiple perspectives reflecting different worldviews throughout formal education, in adult life, and in the workplace.
The Many Languages One World Essay Contest and Global Youth Forum (MLOW) is intended to demonstrate the significance of multilingualism in global citizenship and has given students the opportunity to present, in a learned second language, on the Sustainable Development Goals in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations.
College and university students from around the world are invited to submit an essay, written in a learned second language, on a topic related to the role of multilingualism in global citizenship. Finalists are interviewed via Skype in the language of their essay, and winners are brought to New York, where they have the opportunity to present at the UN.
During a one-week stay on a local campus, the students have the opportunity to work together within their language group on their individual presentation within the topic assigned to the group.
For three of MLOW’s four editions, the presentation topic has been on the sustainable development goals, the 2014 winners presenting on one of the principles of the UN Academic Impact. One important aspect of the MLOW experience is the development of action plans that could potentially be carried out in the student’s home city, region, or country.
An element added for MLOW 2017 was pre-conference research on the assigned goal, its current status in the student winner’s country or community, and on how it could be effectively addressed – the beginnings of a local action plan.
Experiential learning characterizes the entire MLOW process, from travel, to life on a US campus, and of course, to the UN, where the students not only have the opportunity to present in their learned second language, but also to interact with UN staff members at a luncheon in the Delegates Dining Room.
The Importance of Multilingualism in Education for Sustainability
In addition to the significance of diversity in the sustainable organization or enterprise in terms of creativity and equity, there is also the communication imperative – the need to communicate effectively with the greatest number in order to obtain buy-in, influence, and support. Reflecting the fact that sustainability impacts everyone, education for sustainability needs to be multilingual in order to ensure that the broadest segment of the population is informed and in order to elicit buy-in and support of any proposed sustainability initiative.
Educational and informational materials need to be made available in as many languages as possible, even going beyond the official languages of the UN, in order to ensure that the information is widely distributed, making materials available also in a wide range of reading levels so that understanding can be maximized.
Conclusions
The global development agenda, with its 17 SDGs, stands at the heart of global sustainability, and as goal 17 clearly states, partnerships are essential in achieving the goals. Diversity in our society and in our organizations provides a pathway to creativity, problem-solving, and to equity, and multilingualism is both the representation of this diversity and the means to communicate and achieve not only the global development agenda, but also the sustainability of an organization or business.

Author

• Kathleen Stein-Smith, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Metropolitan Campus