In a country with a prominent teacher-to-politician pipeline, it’s perhaps unsurprising that our civil and political scene sometimes resembles a classroom, or that the works of those sectors often take on a pedagogical appearance – not least when the students (the public) fail to meet the teachers’ expectations and receive a scolding entirely reminiscent of those doled out in schools.
Despite that long pedigree, last week the Government announced the latest iteration of a programme that takes that dynamic to another level: the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Champions Programme. Having read more about it since then, it seems fair to say that it’s the national organisation equivalent of a school project, in which enthusiastic applicants are expected to do it for the love of the game.