The idea of the All Party Parliamentary Group is taken from the Parliament of the United Kingdom where Parliament approves the setting up of specific groups of interest which has national concern. The APPGM-SDG undertake an active role in localising SDGs at the parliamentary constituency level by undertaking a mapping of local issues, solutions and networks working there. In addition, there is a policy research component of drawing out local ground issues for policy discussion among Parliamentarians including the preparation of policy papers for both houses of parliament to consider. These will be undertaken with the support of various stakeholders.
The first part of the whole project involved constituency-based research. It was conducted in early 2020 at 10 different constituencies in Malaysia to identify development issues on the ground was conducted in early 2020. From this research, an issue mapping was constructed and this mapping serves as the basis to provide capacity building and solution project. Many unsustainable development issues emerged from the grass-root research, such as loss of livelihood, unsustainable water settlement, unemployment issues among youth and unsustainable waste management. Another cross-cutting issue worth highlighting is the ‘silos’ and lack of coordination among stakeholders and agencies responsible for the local development.
Based on this finding, the capacity building workshop on SDG is proposed with the objective of introducing SDG and enhancing the understanding of SDG among government officers, NGOs, and community representatives apart from encouraging multiple stakeholders to work together towards achieving sustainable development at local level.
The workshop was conducted successfully despite a limited number of participants. Although generally the number of attendees is considered small, it was representative of authorities and local communities, a good mixture of people who are crucial in ensuring the success of mainstreaming SDG. The success of the workshop is illustrated in the pre-post test which shows a significant increase in the score of the questionnaire on SDG knowledge after completion of the workshop.
