º£½ÇÉçÇø

º£½ÇÉçÇø, the United Nations and the SDGs – a relationship to help change the world

The United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 to improve the lives of millions across the world within 15 years. It was an ambitious programme adopted by all 193 member states with 17 goals and 169 targets.

º£½ÇÉçÇø had already established a relationship with the U.N. by then and was determined to help change the world. It was a determination recognised as the university became one of just 17 higher education institutions across the world made a global academic hub in 2019 – and the only one in the United Kingdom.

The university was the global hub for SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions from 2019-25 after being adopted for a second term in 2021, and in 2025 was selected as the global academic hub chair for SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities. No other British university has been a global hub lead.

A proud history of sustainable development

…But our story starts more than 30 years earlier when the º£½ÇÉçÇø’s strong relationship with its home city led to participation in the 1992 Earth Summit, hosted by the U.N. in Rio de Janeiro as member states adopted an agenda aimed at limiting climate change.

º£½ÇÉçÇø would become an official climate observer as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (U.N.F.C.C.C.) and, in 1995, established the Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development (I.E.S.D.) acting as the research arm of the city of Leicester on a whole range of projects.

Research was carried out on energy monitoring, ventilation in buildings, solar energy, electric vehicles, and air quality monitoring, with volunteer researchers walking through the city’s streets carrying a backpack of monitoring equipment.

The concrete results of that work can still be seen today in the Building Schools for the Future programme that saw all the city’s secondary schools rebuilt from the year 2000 based on the university’s research and community engagement programme. The result was buildings with more daylight, better ventilation, extensive grounds, and with a low carbon footprint.

The foundations and credentials for sustainable development had been laid by the university and, from 2014, talks began between º£½ÇÉçÇø and the U.N. that would bring engagement on an international level for the next 10 years.

The European refugee crisis of 2015 and Leicester’s connections with India, particularly the Gujarat province, would form the focus of those talks with the U.N. and begin a major international engagement programme. The first stop in our journey will be India, or more precisely Ahmedabad, in the Gujarat province.

The volunteering programme becomes international

The university was, by 2015, already delivering a community engagement programme across Leicester involving hundreds of students volunteering for The Square Mile project. A total of 33,000 hours of volunteering by students was carried out across 50 projects every year focused mainly on the square mile around º£½ÇÉçÇø. The advent of the SDGs and subsequent discussions with the U.N. brought an international dimension to the engagement.

Square Mile India was born out of those discussions with volunteering and fund raising for community projects in the Ahmedabad area of the Gujarat organised by our students and staff. The province had been the ancestral home for many of those emigrating to Leicester during the 1970s and so had a special resonance.

The next five years until the Covid epidemic intervened saw more than 300 students visit India from the university and £123,468 raised from 765 donors to help communities in this impoverished and neglected part of India.

A whole range of projects were launched across all faculties of the university in areas of Ahmedabad, with a particularly focus on the marginalised Loving Community, a former leper colony still considered off-limits by many locals.

Health and Life Sciences students carried out hearing and eye tests within the local population; money was raised to support 2,000 children stay in education; toilets were built to allow girls to attend schools; business students held development advice sessions; law students held legal advice clinics; and teachers were trained in new skills.

One of the biggest projects was a flood alleviation programme for a village that was inundated every monsoon season resulting in many homes being left under water. Architecture students designed homes that would not flood and money was raised by the university to build 10 of those homes. Students and locals also planted hundreds of trees to help mitigate the worst of the flooding using money raised for Square Mile India.

In June 2018, º£½ÇÉçÇø’s Square Mile India project won the prestigious Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Award (THELMA) as the International Strategy of the Year.

While the volunteering programme and development work was going on in India, discussions had continued with the U.N. on other projects and the European refugee crisis in 2015 was about to add a new dimension to the university’s international engagement.

The refugee crisis and working with the U.N.

The tumultuous events of 2015 with civil war in Syria and continuing strife in Afghanistan and Iraq saw a total of 1.8 million flee their homes looking for asylum, primarily in European countries.

The university, in discussions with the U.N., offered its help as it had been involved in working with refugees since 2013. The university was invited to join the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to act as a consultant on the refugee crisis across Europe and the Middle East.

A local and international volunteer programme was organised by the university, not just to help with relief in a small way but also to help inform and change the negative narrative surrounding asylum seekers and refugees.

Many Syrians found their way to Leicester, but needed help settling, finding work, and acclimatising to life thousands of miles from home. Free English lessons were arranged on campus with recognised I.E.L.T.S. certification; legal advice sessions were organised; study groups were arranged for children; CV and form filling workshops took place; regular community events, arts and sports activities arranged; students also volunteered at a community café held in a local restaurant where refugees could meet, share food and talk about common issues.

All the university’s projects were aimed at integrating and helping refugees into life in the city.

A more ambitious project saw three Syrian academics offered sanctuary at º£½ÇÉçÇø under the Centre for At-Risk Academics (C.A.R.A.) programme after fleeing persecution, conflict and violence in their homeland. The three scholars graduated from the university in 2022 after four years of study.

Refugees from Syria and other countries were regularly invited on to campus for events to talk and inter-act with students and share their personal and very human stories. All the efforts were also to help change the negative narrative in the media surrounding asylum seekers after the crisis that had enveloped Europe in the late 2010s.

Germany had been by far the largest recipient of asylum seekers, with more than 964,000 seeking sanctuary, and student volunteers travelled from º£½ÇÉçÇø to Berlin to help out and understand more of their lives. The programme has seen up to 30 students travel to Germany each year since 2016 to continue that work.

The university’s work around refugees led the United Nations to ask º£½ÇÉçÇø to spearhead the refugee advocacy project Together, which aimed to unite as many higher education institutions around the world as possible in a global campaign to offer help and change the narrative surrounding asylum seekers and refugees.

In 2017, our students travelled to the U.N. headquarters in New York to join those of eight other founding universities, in the United States of America, Brazil, Cyprus, and Germany to officially launch the campaign. Within two years, the group had swelled to more than 100 universities.

All of the work with refugees would culminate in a major honour º£½ÇÉçÇø on 1 January 2019.

The U.K.’s only global academic hub

New Year’s Day 2019 saw the United Nations award º£½ÇÉçÇø global academic hub status for one of the Sustainable Development Goals – SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. This was the first time the U.N. had decided to create global academic hubs and the SDG 16 award was the first made.

In making the announcement, the Director of the U.N.’s Department of Publication Information Dr Maher Nasser said: ‘Earlier this year I saw first-hand how º£½ÇÉçÇø has taken the lead in supporting SDG 16 – supporting peace, justice and strong institutions – through its inspirational work on the Together campaign.

‘Through its efforts, students from all six continents have found their voice and confidence in taking practical steps towards sustainable development goal 16 and other selected goals.

‘The visibility given to the SDGs in the university’s strategic plan will undoubtedly spark curiosity. And curiosity in the hands of young people and nurtured within the walls of this university can help channel energy into activism, action, and the creation of a better world.’

º£½ÇÉçÇø was the only one in the U.K. to be made a global academic hub for the SDGs.

The university immediately took up the baton of being an academic focal point for SDG 16 and, just as importantly, exposing its students, staff, and Leicester’s wider general public to sustainability and the goals.

Three years later, the university was confirmed by the United Nations Academic Impact (U.N.A.I.) as the global hub for SDG 16 for a further three years until January 2025. In making the announcement, the Chief of the U.N.A.I.’s Department of Global Communications, Ramu Damodaran, said the award was ‘in recognition of the research, innovation, and scholarship undertaken in support of this SDG’. Again, the university was the only one in the U.K. to be announced as a global hub for one of the SDGs.

In January 2025, the university was again awarded U.N.A.I. global hub status for an SDG. This time it was for SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities, a goal close to the university’s roots and the work on sustainability in its home city from the early 1990s. The university was asked to become the global hub chair for SDG 11 as the U.N. academic hub programme for the SDGs was expanded and enhanced in 2025 to include a chair and three other universities, leading work in the areas of teaching and education; outreach and partnerships; and research.

Dr Maher Nasser, now the Director of the U.N.A.I.’s Outreach Division of the Department of Global Communications, said the award was ‘based on its wide range of outreach programmes that have effectively promoted social cohesion. Through engagement with these programmes and student-led initiatives, the university has demonstrated its commitment to SDG 11. Notably, the amplification of local voices through Project Atefa and the outreach efforts aimed at young people during COP 29 stand out as significant achievements.’

Project Atefa was a natural progression from the work the university had been involved in with refugees. The project was born out of the story of Atefa Waseq, an Afghani woman who had fled after the return to power of the Taliban. º£½ÇÉçÇø students met Atefa on a fact-finding trip to the Marienfelde Refugee Centre, in Germany, and listened to her harrowing story of escaping the country leaving her family behind, and fearing for her life as a female educator. Project Atefa was born in her name to try to change the negative narrative surrounding asylum seekers. The project saw students interview, write and then publish the stories of refugees in Leicester telling their emotional tales of fleeing violence, threats and persecution in their homeland. The stories were to demonstrate the human, rather than political, side of the refugee debate.

Dr Nasser also noted the ‘significant achievement’ of outreach events at COP 29 in November 2024. To coincide with the COP climate action talks of world leaders each year, º£½ÇÉçÇø organises a series of events for students and staff to highlight the issues and raise awareness. The 25 events across the 11 days of COP 29 involved more than 500 staff and students and included a river and canal clean-up at several sites in Leicester, a community event highlighting sustainability, carbon literacy training, and a university awards night to recognise students and staff who had delivered exceptional work in the climate change and sustainability field.

A university battling for change on the world stage

The year previously for COP 28 in Dubai, the university had an even more ambitious approach spread over three centres – our Leicester campus, our campus in the United Arab Emirates, and at the COP talks themselves held in Dubai during December 2023.

º£½ÇÉçÇø was the only higher education institution in Europe to have a dedicated pavilion in the COP 28 Blue Zone, which is only open to world leaders, government officials, climate observers, and the media. A team of 10 climate change academics and researchers from the university attended debates representing our university as an official observer to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (U.N.F.C.C.C.). The recommendations from those debates were fed back to the world leaders and dignitaries to help form the final agreement reached at COP 28.

The university also hosted a series of events at its pavilion throughout the 11 days, including meetings of the C40 network of 100 cities championing for climate change, and the Bezos Foundation, a philanthropic organisation run by the family of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Talks were also held between º£½ÇÉçÇø’s senior leadership and government ministers from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and the United Kingdom as well as a series of United Nations officials. Our researchers also held talks with the King of Malawi in the pavilion on a collaboration for the use of biofuels to lessen the reliance on fertilisers being used in his country.

º£½ÇÉçÇø has also been at the forefront of the United Nations Football for the Goals initiative, which aims to harness the popularity of the game to increase awareness of the SDGs. In 2021, work began on a collaboration between the university and a football club in one of the poorest parts of the city with the aim of becoming the first net zero amateur club in Britain.

There has been a practical side to the environmental work in moving towards net zero status, but research and student engagement projects have also taken place to try to give a voice to the marginalised and poor in society that are often not heard in the climate change debate.

United Nations backing for the local programme led to international interest that has now seen a network established of universities across the world collaborating with their local football clubs. The network has grown over the past three years to include 22 amateur football clubs and universities in Europe, Africa, and Asia with the backing of the football associations in the various countries and the UN Football for the Goals programme.

The project has also involved the British parliament, which in March 2023 invited the university’s representatives to give evidence before the Environment Audit Committee, which was examining whether enough support was being given to grassroots sports clubs in the drive for net zero ambitions.

A complete change of culture across the university

º£½ÇÉçÇø also established in late 2024 an SDG Fellows programme, which allows academics, researchers, and professional services staff to apply to become members. Those displaying commitment to the sustainable development goals and pledging to promote their values, targets, and indicators gain access to a range of benefits afforded by the university because of its relationship with the United Nations. These include the ability to publish their work through the U.N.’s wide network of organisations, access to U.N. events and conferences, and financial bursaries for travel to those activities. To date, more than 120 academics, researchers, and professional services staff have been admitted to the SDG Fellows programme.

Thousands of staff and students have been introduced to the United Nations and the sustainable development goals in the past decade. More than 2,800 students from the university have visited the U.N. headquarters in New York since 2017 to take part in conferences and events through our work on the refugee crisis, SDGs, and as part of the academic global hub network. An SDG conference was held by the university during the Expo, in Dubai, in December 2021; it co-hosted a U.N. summit in Utah in 2022; was part of the U.N.’s European and Social Council talks on refugees again in Utah in 2020; and was one of the lead participants at the inaugural SDG Global Hub conferences in Greece in 2024.