Solutions Summit Live from the UN at 6pm ET Features Global Goals Innovators from Many Continents

Later today, immediately following the conclusion of the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit, the UN-hosted Solutions Summit will turn attention to hear about people and organizations around the world who are already working on innovative solutions to implement the new Global Goals. The Solutions Summit, to be held at United Nations headquarters, seeks to match innovative solutions with the strategic advice, networks and partners they need to scale up their efforts and impact.

“Everyone has a role to play in advancing the Global Goals, and innovators and entrepreneurs are central to finding the solutions needed to achieve these goals,” said Kathy Calvin, President and CEO of the United Nations Foundation. “The Solutions Summit is a catalytic gathering of some of the best and brightest who have developed innovative approaches to the world’s most vexing issues.”

The Solutions Summit will convene a dynamic group of policy makers, innovators, investors, UN leadership, and leaders from the private sector and civil society, together with a diverse group of impactful technologists, engineers, scientists and innovators from around the world who have developed innovative solutions to the goals. The Summit features 14 women and men from many continents—innovators who were chosen through an open and transparent Solutions-Summit.org call for applications coordinated by the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service that drew more than 800 submissions from more than 90 countries. The 14 innovators tonight represent a sample of ingenious solution makers from all over the world who already have solutions-in-progress for our Global Goals.

The Solutions Summit stresses support of innovators and entrepreneur across the world as a winning way to advance the Global Goals, the to-do list for a new generation. As Richard Curtis, founder of Project Everyone, said, “The Millennium Development Goals halved extreme poverty across the world. The new Global Goals give us the opportunity to end it for good. There’s no point in going halfway. By making the Global Goals famous we can give them their best chance of working around the world—and help make us the first generation to end extreme poverty, the most determined generation in history to end injustice and inequality, and the last generation to be threatened by climate change.”

The first portion of the event – the Solutions Workshop – will start with each solution maker giving a four minute lighting talk followed by brainstorming discussions on how best to support these and all of our Solutions Makers with resources, feedback and constructive advice. Immediately following the workshop portion, participants will gather with a wider group of partners for a reception to celebrate the adoption of the goals and commit to action for their implementation. Attendees will then be guided through 14 interactive stations where they can engage with the innovators, experience the solutions, and talk with others in attendance from various sectors to see how best to support solution makers.

“There are already extraordinary people and teams around the world with solutions-in-progress. Using our global human networks and the Internet we can connect in cross-disciplinary ways to collaborate much more quickly—to scout, share, support and scale these solutions,” said Megan Smith, U.S. Chief Technology Officer. “If we network well with a broad range of skills at the table, we will bring insights, resources and iteration to support breakthrough solution makers—and accelerate our work to reach the Global Goals.”

The event will be live-streamed on UN TV at www.webtv.un.org. The Solutions Summit is being led by the UN Foundation and the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service (UN-NGLS), in collaboration with Project Everyone, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the Kenyan Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology, the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Chilean Ministry of Economy – Innovation Division, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Government of Fiji, and the Somali Ministry of Foreign Affairs,with support from Dell, Inc., Caterpillar Foundation, Guggenheim Partners, MasterCard, BNY Mellon, Intel Corporation, and Rockwood Asset Management, and many other global friends and colleagues. Tonight’s Solutions Summit at the United Nations is a cross-disciplined networked innovation event—the collaborators hope that others will clone and adapt this format as an innovation acceleration format for meetings.

For more information on the event and featured solutions, go to http://www.solutions-summit.org/ and for the live stream at 6-8pm ET http://webtv.UN.org.

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Media Contact:

Amy Auguston (UN Foundation): 516.830.0198, aauguston@unfoundation.org

Carina McKeown (Project Everyone): 929.331.7476, carina@project-everyone.org

About the United Nations Foundation
The United Nations Foundation builds public-private partnerships to address the world’s most pressing problems, and broadens support for the United Nations through advocacy and public outreach. Through innovative campaigns and initiatives, the Foundation connects people, ideas, and resources to help the UN solve global problems. The Foundation was created in 1998 as a U.S. public charity by entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Turner and now is supported by global corporations, foundations, governments, and individuals. For more information, visit www.unfoundation.org .

About Project Everyone
Project Everyone is the brainchild of Richard Curtis with the ambition to tell everyone in the world about the Global Goals so they are best achieved. The project’s Founding Partners include Aviva, Getty Images, Pearson, SAWA Global Cinema Advertising Association, Standard Chartered, Unilever and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. All over the world the project is being supported by hundreds of television, radio, poster and digital companies, mobile phone and broadband providers, NGO organizations from all sectors, businesses, sports clubs, film and television production companies, record labels, events, magazines and retailers, all of whom have agreed to carry the goals to their fans, customers and users to help them become known all over the world.www.globalgoals.org www.projecteveryone.org