What is 17 Rooms?
17 Rooms is an innovative approach to spurring community action for the world’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
You will gather into working groups (or “Rooms”) to come up with actions that are big enough to matter but sized-right to get done over 12-18 months.
This event occurring Friday morning October 4th is sponsored by Fairfax County Leaders and meant to assemble students and teachers around the Fairfax County Schools. It’s taking place at Willow Oaks Administrative Center. The leaders will ask and listen to what others have to say and all will collaborate to motivate action around all 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in their community.
17 Rooms has three core design principles
1. All SDGs get a seat at the table.
https://sdgs.un.org/
2. Take a next step, not the perfect step
You are encouraged to focus on collaborative actions for an SDG issue that are big enough to matter and sized-right to get done within 12-18 months.
3. Engage in conversations, not presentations
17 Rooms celebrates informal discussions among peers.
You are encouraged to leave your institutional agendas at the door and focus on what could be best for an issue, not for an organization.
17 Rooms provides a neutral platform to explore all 17 environmental, social, and economic priorities on equal footing.
There are four phases to any 17 Rooms exercise
1. First, you will meet with your “Room” to surface shared priorities and brainstorm 1-3 actions that Room members can take to advance progress.
You will work with other Room Members to surface community challenges and identify potential next steps.
Your perspectives, priorities, and resources are crucial to informing and implementing Room actions.
2. Then, you will visit one other Room for a cross-Room exchange.
You will have an opportunity provide feedback on another Room’s actions and explore potential cross-Room synergies.
3.After the cross-Room exchange, all Rooms will share their proposed actions in a rapid report-out session with all participants.
This is a great opportunity for you to learn about all of the proposed Room actions and identify pathways for next steps after the summit!
4. Finally, it is over to you to work with your Room members to take action!
