We are extremely proud to announce that Paragon Partnerships, along with Kantar Public and SDG Action Campaign won this year’s
MRS President`s Award.
Huge thanks go to Kantar Public and SDG Action campaign who worked in a great partnership to ensure the reporting countries` citizen perceptions around SDGs are measured and reported in the UN HLPF in NYC with great success.
Paragon Partnerships was launched at the MRS Annual Conference, IMPACT 2016, by Stan Sthanunathan of Unilever, in response to the UN’s 17th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) – the call for
private sector partnerships to help the UN achieve the SDG’s by 2030.
It was realised very early that the sustainable development goals cannot be achieved by any single agency – even the UN! A successful sustainable development agenda requires
partnerships between governments, the private sector and civil society. And these inclusive partnerships built upon principles and values, a shared vision, and shared goals that place people and the planet at the centre, are needed at the global, regional, national and local level.
Hence, Paragon is the initiative of the global market and social research industry sector, aimed at enabling Governments, Academics, the UN and NGOs around the world, which are working to tackle the 17-point plan of the UN Global Goals – end poverty, combat climate change, and fight injustice and inequality around the world – to connect with market, opinion and social research companies, which are committed to helping by providing access to quality data and insights on the issues that the world is facing.
One of the core objectives of Paragon is to help
measure progress with the UN goals to not only keep governments and policy makers accountable, but also gauge how much we are getting closer to the targets so that new policy adjustments can be made – so, in 2017, an 11-country study was conducted for the UN SDG Action Campaign, sponsored by the Paragon Members, Kantar Public and Lightspeed.
Kantar Public developed and tested a question library of almost 100 SDG Questions. This in itself was a huge project, which constituted the first step to enable countries to measure their journey to the accomplishment of the SDGs in a consistent way. It was developed by the market research professionals within Kantar Public and therefore had high reliability and validity when used. And most of all, this question library meant that countries could establish a year 0 benchmark and do year over year comparison.
Then, based on the priority SDGs of the 2017 HLPF, questions were selected of this question library to include in the study. The priority SDG ‘s for the High Level Political Forum (HLPF) 2017 were: SDG 1: No Poverty, SDG 2: Zero Hunger, SDG 3: Good Health and Well Being, SDG 5: Gender Equality, SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, and SDG 14: Life Below Water. Therefore, 20 of the most pertinent questions based on the focus goals were selected to be asked. The research was conducted in 11 voluntary reporting countries for 2017: Argentina, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Thailand. The results are representative of the online population, providing a baseline against which to measure progress in future years.
As a result, a benchmark was successfully established for these countries to improve on as they continue their journey to meet the SDGs by 2030.
In 2018 the UN SDG Action Campaign requested further support to measure progress with the 2018 priority SDG’s in targeted
emerging markets where accurate measurement is only possible using representative random probability methodologies. So, Paragon, the Global Research Business Network (GRBN), and ESOMAR Foundation called for volunteer agencies in the selected countries to sponsor a survey for the UN.
The following 4 Agencies volunteered to conduct a representative survey in their country with no charge, completely pro bono:
- – CASN – Central Arab Statistical Network (Lebanon)
- – Reach (Lebanon)
- – Kantar Sri Lanka
- – 360insights (Romania)
The questionnaire was again drawn from the question library developed by Kantar to cover the six priority SDG’s for 2018 : Water and sanitation for all (SDG 6); sustainable and modern energy for all (SDG 7); cities and human settlements (SDG 11); sustainable consumption and production patterns (SDG 12); sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss (SDG 15); and global partnership for sustainable development (SDG 17).
Kantar Operations India analysed the data, and the presentation of the data was delivered by Kantar Public at UN HLPF (High Level Political forum) Meeting on July 13
th, 2018.
Subsequently the 4 agencies have been connected with local UN representatives and promoted and recognized by the UN SDG Action Campaign on their website,
http://sdgactioncampaign.org/2018/10/08/myworldhlpf/, and in social media etc. UN SDG Action Campaign has also made the data publicly available for any government organization and/or NGO to use.
What is extraordinary about this initiative:
- Members of the global market research industry are coming together (agencies, clients, even competitors) to contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals
- A question library is developed and is now available for any country to use as they need, which is consistent, developed by highly qualified market research professionals, and allows for year over year comparison
- Small/local market research agencies from all around the world volunteered (including Kantar and Lightspeed, in addition to the smaller ones in 2018), without not even asking to be compensated for basic cost. The whole effort was completely pro-bono.
- The dedication of the agencies showed itself when they made it happen in a very short time to meet the deadlines of the UN HLPF
