Deputy Secretary-General Opens ‘Solve at the United Nations’ Live Pitch Event, 7 March

In remarks made this morning at the opening of the live pitch event “Solve at the United Nations”, Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed stated that working for the Sustainable Development Goals represented an investment in preventing future disaster, conflict and crisis.  “The Secretary-General has made crisis prevention a top priority,” she noted.  “Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals is our only insurance policy.”  To achieve the Goals, the Deputy-Secretary General emphasized, “we need solutions, we need innovation and we need partnership”.

“Solve at the United Nations” is a collaboration between the United Nations Academic Impact, a programme of the Department of Public Information, and Solve, an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .  At the event, some 42 selected innovators pitched their solutions to three challenges issued by Solve last November — on refugee education, chronic diseases and carbon impact — to a panel of expert judges and a live audience of over 200 non-profit, academic, student and private-sector leaders.

Successful participants in “Solve at the United Nations” will receive support and join workshops at Solve at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 8 to 10 May.  They will also work with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to establish partnerships with leaders from the public, private, non-profit and academic sectors in order to implement their innovative ideas.

Also speaking at the opening, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Cristina Gallach underscored the resonance between how Solve fosters open innovation and partnership to meet global challenges and the shared culture of intellectual social responsibility that binds the member institutions of the United Nations Academic Impact.  Currently, the United Nations Academic Impact has more than 1,200 members worldwide furthering the realization of the purposes and mandate of the United Nations through their activities and research.

For more information on Solve, please visit https://solve.mit.edu. For more information on the United Nations Academic Impact, please visit https://academicimpact.un.org/.