April 10 2024. The Arnaiz Institute of Studies and Research, an international entity with more than 15 years of experience in technical training on sustainable urban development and governance, has launched in 2023-2024 the Municipal SDG Programme in Latin America, training a total of 4,200 young people from 58 municipalities in 7 countries (Bolivia, Peru, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador) in the knowledge of their local territories.
The Municipal SDGs emerged as a unique, social and collaborative initiative in Latin America driven by the need to localise the 17 SDGs in the communities, as a global commitment to address the problems of poverty, inequality and climate change, among others. The Programme has been based on the socialisation and dissemination of the real situation of the municipalities among young people and civil society, the generation of territorial data through the development of digital maps of the characteristics of the SDGs within the municipalities, and the fulfilment of a framework of multi-stakeholder collaboration as required by Latin American cities.
In its development, the Programme is firmly committed to territorial technology through the “Open SDG’s” platform, created with the UrbiGIS, a software owned by Arnaiz Urbimática company, which has been used for the creation and publication of more than 700 digital maps in free geoportals donated to each of the participating municipalities. Between 2021 and 2024, the Municipal SDG has resulted in an investment of around 500,000 euros of the Arnaiz Institute’s own funds.
The Institute is the driving force behind the Corporate Social Responsibility of Arnaiz, a leading firm in urban planning and global real estate development, which offers a comprehensive range of services that is unique in the market, as it covers all phases of land transformation and management.
Its activity, in line with the problems that the SDGs aim to solve, is based on the promotion of environmental, social and good governance criteria with a business approach, on training young people in the knowledge of their territories and on collaboration with private companies and international entities in the field of cooperation, promoting the development and growth of local, regional and national governments in Latin America, as well as on the generation of collaboration agreements in the institutional and business spheres.
The Arnaiz Institute works in a complementary way with the Latin American Federation of Cities, Municipalities and Local Government Associations (FLACMA), in which Leopoldo Arnaiz chairs the Executive Presidency of its Advisory Council and Fernando Arnaiz heads its office in Europe.
The Municipal SDG programme is constantly evolving and is expected to be launched in September of 2024, with the involvement of new municipalities and local youth from the municipalities of the Latin American region.
For further information:
ATREVIA
Carlos C. Ungría cungria@atrevia.com / 672 44 70 65
Raquel Nueno rnueno@atrevia.com / 644 273 00
