The Lopez Group Foundation Inc. sponsored a brown bag session on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a speaker from the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) last April 27 from 10:00 in the morning until 12:00 noon. The session entitled Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was attended by 14 participants from LGFI, FPH, EDC, ELFI-LMM and KChF.

The speaker, Mr. Michael Provido,  from NEDA’s United Nations Development Programme, shared a brief assessment of the Philippine’s accomplishment in the Millennium Development Goals before discussing the salient features of the Post-2015 agenda and the SDGs. Mr. Provido shared that the Philippines was not able to meet the MDG targets on Education, Gender disparity, Maternal Mortality, Access to Reproductive Health services and HIV-AIDS. On the other hand, he highlighted the priorities of the Philippine government in the implementation of the SDGs under the tagline: “Make the 2030 Agenda a reality and leave no one behind”,  these were: recognition of migrant rights, addressing climate change with urgency,collective action for conservation and equality of opportunities. In her closing synthesis, LGFI’s Faith I. Bacon cited the need for clear bench marking and data to ensure measurability of gains, need for the private sector, such as LGFI, to explore possibility of participating in setting the indicators which is still a work in progress and to align the future Lopez Group’s CSR initiatives reporting along the SDGs targets and indicators.