Celebrating Diwali – Taking a Break for Gratitude
This week, we took a break from our typical weekly rigor in our team meetings, to celebrate Diwali and the start of the season of gratitude. For over a year, our team has been meeting every Tuesday for our Research & Writing Workshop. We cover a variety of topics, to ensure that our UN SDG Corporate Guidebooks are engaging, useful, relevant, and enjoyable to read, while also maintaining the highest levels of scholarly rigor in our writing. Topics are typically on the weighty side, such as proper citation format, preventing unintentional plagiarism, developing corporate key performance indicators (KPIs), materiality.
This Tuesday, our meeting was a reflection around the Zoom room of gratitude. Our writing topic for our Guidebooks was the Dedication and Acknowledgements, which provided a springboard for team members to share who they’d like to acknowledge for support, inspiration, or for having brought them into this project.
Inspiring and Illuminating Sentiments for Diwali
The sentiments shared were touching, inspiring, and illuminating. There were heartfelt words that came from heads, hearts and souls, to paraphrase Anuradha Jain. Team members expressed gratitude for support from family, friends and colleagues. Interestingly, there were several mentions of gratitude for networks where we’ve connected, including LinkedIn.
There were expressions of gratitude for personal growth throughout the project. Several team members explained that they’ve learned so much, and have grown as researchers and writers. Dr. Mishma Stanilslaus shared that “Every session has been a learning lesson.”
We even got a peek at Diwali decorations and the light of Mumbai, from Amaraja Kulkarni!
Milestones in the Marathon
This was a fitting way to spend our team meeting prior to the festival of lights. We are approaching some notable milestones, in the midst of this marathon of a project! Some of our Guidebooks are getting very close to completion, which will mark the beginning of our illumination to businesses throughout the world in how to engage in the UN 2030 Agenda, by strategically focusing on specific SDGs and their Targets. This has been a journey of multiple leaps of faith for the pioneering SDG Teams, particularly SDGs 8 and 12. Right on their heels are SDGs 3, 4 and 5. Starting soon, we will have SDGs 7, 9 and 11. During 2022, we will be starting the remaining nine SDGs. At times like this, when I step back and take stock of the scope of this project, I am struck by the enormity of our undertaking.
My Personal Thanks to the Team
On this Diwali, I would like to thank each and every one of our UN SDG Team Members, and all of those who have supported SHERPA Institute over the past year. With sincere gratitude, the light in me honors the light in you. Namaste.
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Happy Diwali to all our contributors in India and all our Indian contributors in other countries!