'Wannabe' video draws attention to UN Sustainable Development Goals

The organization Project Everyone wants you to tell them what you really, really want. 

Project Everyone, which aims to get the word out about the Sustainable Development Goals created by the UN last year, has created a video based on the 1996 Spice Girls hit “Wannabe.” Performers in the video include singer Gigi Lamayne, actress Jacqueline Fernandez, dancer Larsen Thompson, and singer Seyi Shay.

The group presents goals such as “end violence against girls,” “quality education for all girls,” and “end child marriage.”

Project Everyone is asking those on social media to share their vision of the future is when it comes to women with the hashtag #WhatIReallyReallyWant. They say the posts will then be presented to the UN this fall.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals include “zero hunger,” “no poverty,” and “sustainable cities and communities.” The organization is aiming to have the initiatives completed by 2030. 

Monitor writer Howard LaFranchi noted that the new set of goals represents a change in thinking about “development and how it works.”

“Out is the view of development as a technical enterprise largely funded by the world’s wealthy powers and other outsiders,” Mr. LaFranchi wrote. “In is seeing development as a political process involving a wide range of actors – well beyond technocrats and politicians – in which foreign aid and global development institutions take a back seat. The priority is on leveraging local communities and investment.… To critics, this massively expanded suite of tasks and participants is a recipe for a bland and unwieldy mixture of pie-in-the-sky aspirations…. But others say the new SDGs are not just a kitchen sink of development goals. They are the product of a more grass-roots process that began with input from a broader range of advocacy groups and everyday citizens than ever before for such a project, officials say.” 

The "Wannabe" video has received praise for how those behind it are working to achieve their goals. 

“Twenty years on, the pop group [Spice Girls]’s legacy of ‘girl power’ is being put to good use,” Tara John of Time writes, while Rolling Stone writer Brittany Spanos called the video “empowering.”