The sustainable development goal of partnership “is the great unifier between all the other goals,” said Sharon Eubank, director of Humanitarian Services for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“I believe relationships have to precede any kind of action. We can’t go forward until we trust the people we’re working with,” she said.
Sister Eubank was one of three participants in a panel discussion titled “Global Partnership for Sustainable Development” at the United Nations’ International Academic Conference on the Sustainable Development Goals at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on Friday, Oct. 7.
She was joined by Eider Inunciaga Serna of the BBK Foundation and Baldomero Lago, chief international officer for Utah Valley University. Jayashri Wyatt, chief of Education Outreach for the United Nations, moderated the discussion.
Sister Eubank highlighted the importance of trust and relationships in working toward the 17 Sustainable Development Goals as part of the U.N.’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Even those who disagree can “still maintain strong relationships and respect for human dignity,” she said.
Importance of relationships
To show how relationships lead to action, Sister Eubank shared the example of the Church’s collaboration with Black 14.
In 1969, 14 Black football players at the University of Wyoming approached their coach prior to a game against Brigham Young University to tell him they were interested in protesting a race-based Church policy. He kicked them off the team the day before their game with BYU, jeopardizing their educations and football careers.
Eleven of the surviving Black 14 started the Black 14 Philanthropy in 2019 to educate, feed and serve those in need. Some of their work is done in collaboration with the Church — collaboration that began a few years ago with a conversation between one of the former players and Elder S. Gifford Nielsen, a General Authority Seventy and BYU football player in the 1970s.
Since November 2020, the Church has donated some 1 million pounds of food to the Black 14 Philanthropy. Another shipment of 80,000 pounds of food will be delivered later this year.
“They reached across difficulties, formed a relationship, and it led to action,” Sister Eubank said. “And that’s my goal here today, is that our relationships could compel us then toward action.”
How and why does the Church collaborate with others?
One advantage of the Church being a global faith is that “we’re hyperlocal at the congregational level but we also in aggregate have a global presence,” Sister Eubank said.
“We want to use the values, the energy and the motivation born from our faith to energize members of our faith to do things in their congregations. My personal belief is that we are most powerful in the places where we live.”
At the local level, members of the Church “engage with other faiths, with the local government, with civil society, and to do things that make our communities better.”
The app and website JustServe is a tool that connects volunteers with organizations looking for help within a community. Examples of service opportunities around the Orem community, for example, include bringing a meal to someone in need, mentoring someone facing intergenerational poverty and reading to children with low reading levels.
“Those small things that we do for each other strengthen the fabric of our community,” Sister Eubank said.
In addition to these local efforts, the Church works with organizations to make progress on initiatives such as nutrition, education and clean water in dozens of countries. The Church also seeks to collaborate with “multinational players,” such as the World Food Programme and UNICEF, who can aggregate resources and make a large impact.
For those in the audience working to build relationships, Sister Eubank offered this counsel: “My plea for everyone here is as you try to leverage the connections that we’ve made here, and you’re so excited and it doesn’t click, please don’t get discouraged. … Continue to reach out and try again. It is in the consistency that the relationships develop.”
Other speakers at the U.N. conference
Bishop L. Todd Budge, second counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, spoke in the inaugural session on Oct. 5 about how individuals, families and communities share a sacred duty to care for the earth.
“The consequences of our actions, for better or worse, accumulate into the future and are sometimes felt only generations later,” Bishop Budge said. “Stewardship requires feet and hands at work in the present with a gaze fixed on the future.”
Sister Kristin M. Yee, second counselor in the Relief Society general presidency, participated in a panel discussion on Oct. 6 titled “End poverty in all its forms everywhere.”
Ending poverty begins with recognizing one’s value as a child of God and then looking outward, she said. “Knowing who we are changes how we think about ourselves and what our potential is.”
