Toolkit for the Interdisciplinary Infusion of the SDGs into Classrooms

Government and Politics

The following resources provide instructors with materials to support, introduce and infuse SDGs into their Government and Politics lessons.

  • Review the lesson plan titled ‘Catalyzing Local Impact to Make the World a Better Place’ to infuse SDGs #10 and #16. Students will address the question ‘How can individuals create local solutions to tackle global problems?’ 

  • Visit The Choices Program from Brown University that creates educational resources and makes innovative scholarship accessible to diverse classrooms. It empowers students to understand the relationship between history and current issues while developing analytical skills to become thoughtful global citizens. The site includes free lessons.

  • Read the Forced to Flee lesson plan. The learning objective is to transform thinking and inspire action around conflict, migration, and refugees.

  • Review the Hungry for Food Security – The East African Experience lesson. It introduces students to the issue of food insecurity with an emphasis on East Africa. It has statistics, examples and case studies. Students will also learn the factors impacting food insecurity and will be provided with an overview of some grassroots approaches to enhancing food security in rural African communities. 

  • Visit Learning for Justice for a Lesson Bank of ready-to-use classroom lessons that offer breadth and depth of essential social justice topics and can be filtered by level, subject, topic or social justice domain. 

  • Review this lesson plan titled ‘Role of Institutions in Society’. It addresses SDGs #10 and #16. Students will consider the role that institutions play in effecting societal change and affecting individual lives.

  • Visit the SDG Academy Library for free, open educational resources. Content can be searched by language, SDG, series and subject.

  • Visit the Wakelet SDG page for lesson plans, links, videos, student challenges, activities, infographics and tasks for all of the 17 SDGs.
  • The Sustainable Development Goals Fund has an online database of sustainable development case studies and a selection of effective practices on how to achieve a sustainable world while advancing the 17 SDGs.
  • Tfanen, an EU-funded program implemented by the British Council, strengthens Tunisia’s cultural sector for local development. It provides grants and capacity-building support across multiple artistic disciplines, establishing partnerships and promoting inclusion, resilience, and freedom of expression. Tfanen reflects the spirit of SDG 17 by fostering international cooperation and resource mobilization.
  • 30 Self Nudges for the SDGs is an SDG i-Level Project that launched the Self-Nudging Online Toolkit for University Staff on SDGs. Self-Nudges help remind university teachers and staff of the relevance of their work to the SDGs, prompting them to think about sustainable development, apply this mental framework to their work and as a result create more contributions to SDGs while feeling better about what they do. A continuous and reinforced engagement with the SDGs will create a mindset conducive to forging new individual contributions to sustainable development and the SDGs.
  • Visit Alliance 87, an organization specifically focused on Target 8.7 and joining forces to provide educational resources, facts and graphics around ending forced labour, modern slavery, human trafficking and child labour around the world.
  • Read Advancing the SDGs at Canadian Universities. 

  • Visit Canadian Geographic Education a standing committee of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. They offer teacher guides, lesson plans, giant floor maps, videos, infographics, maps & activities, and interactives.
  • Visit the Canadian Labour Congress. They help people to understand the issues facing workers in Canada including Indigenous and LGBTQ employees and employees of colour. They have economists, researchers and subject matter experts and produce in-depth analysis on issues such as working conditions, health and safety, wages and benefits, healthcare, pensions and retirement security. 

  • Visit NLP’s Checkology. Lessons and resources will show you how to navigate today’s challenging information landscape. Learn how to identify credible information, seek out reliable sources, and apply critical thinking skills to separate fact-based content from falsehoods. Checkology gives you the habits of mind and tools to evaluate and interpret information.

  • Visit CuriPow, a platform that lets curiosity empower people with a short untold story each day on the diversity of history through cultural identity and heritage. All the CuriShorts are researched and curated from The Library of Congress.

  • Visit Faculty for a Future and search the Seed Library It is a searchable database of open-access educational resources that can support educators and students by integrating sustainability into discipline-specific teaching and learning. Search by issue, discipline, resource type and characteristic.
  • FairTrade Canada advocates for thriving farmer and worker communities that have more control over their futures. They stand in solidarity with producer organizations, without compromise, to their standards, prices, or vision to make trade work for everyone along the supply chain. Their impact is economic, social and environmental. 

  • Read the Feminist International Assistance Policy report from Global Affairs Canada. It describes helping to eradicate poverty and vulnerability around the world with supports targeted to investments, partnerships, innovation and advocacy. 

  • Find Geospatial data and timely data sets for countries around the world by SDG.

  • The Land Portal Foundation was established to create, curate and disseminate land governance information by fostering an inclusive and accessible data landscape. Over the last decade, the portal has evolved from a simple information gateway to become a knowledge broker, a resource base, a vibrant online community of users and a trusted voice within global land governance.

  • Visit the News Literacy Project (NLP)  a nonpartisan national education nonprofit. It provides programs and resources for educators and the public to teach, learn and share the abilities needed to be smart, active consumers of news and information and equal and engaged participants in a democracy.

  • Visit the SDG Academy Library for free, open educational resources. Global Studies content including Global Governance, International Security, Migration Studies and Human Rights can be searched by language, SDG, series and subject.

  • Visit the SDG Academy Library for free and open educational materials in Environmental, Fiscal, Industrial and Public policy.

  • Visit the SDG Academy Library for free and open educational materials for International and Investment Law. 

  • Visit the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems a thematic network that aims to connect experts and practitioners to turn knowledge into practice for SDG 2. There are projects, reports, recent work and publications. 

  • TeachSDGs helps instructors to connect to the SDGs through resources such as videos, global projects, social media and teacher connections. 

  • Read TReNDS’ report titled ‘Towards A Framework for Governing Data Innovation: Fostering Trust in The Use of Non-Traditional Data Sources in Statistical Production’. 
  • Read the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index 2022 report supporting SDGs #5, #8, #16, the 20th edition of the CEI is a survey benchmarking tool on how corporations across the United States and beyond are adopting equitable workplace policies, practices and benefits for LGBTQ+ employees. By using the CEI criteria as a guide, businesses can help ensure that their existing policy and benefits infrastructure is inclusive of LGBTQ+ workers and their families.
  • Check out the South African SDG Hub, that hosts over 150,000 research articles and classifies them in terms of SDGs, to find information for sustainable development policy decisions.