Sustainable GeoCommunities (SGC) is leveraging the power of research to create healthy, equitable, and prosperous conditions for people across the globe. This community-based program has the audacious goal of solving problems that local communities are facing with globally reaching results. SGC uses a bottom-up approach that starts with a local community and works with them to leverage local knowledge and the power of academic research institutions to discover novel solutions that can then be scaled for global impact. SGC is targeting community goals which are critical to local communities from Minnesota, USA to Kerala, India.
Local Problems → Local Solutions → Global Impacts
Led by the University of Minnesota (UMN) and the University at Buffalo (UB) in partnership with Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK), IIT Bombay (IITB), IIT Delhi (IITD), IIT Goa (IITG), Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (a multicampus Indian university) and others, Sustainable GeoCommunities will help local communities around the world grow and thrive by meeting UN Sustainable Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
SGC Program Goals & Timeline
SGC has a long-term vision to build a global center that will solve global problems with local solutions. The UMN is providing significant seed grant funds to start the initiative and will achieve a broad base of funding through philanthropy, state, industry, and federal agencies. The initial timeline of nine years is divided into three milestones.