The United Nations Action 2015 Campaign
Action2015 was a new initiative that would campaign on post-2015 and climate change during 2015.
Two processes, COP – UNFCCC and the finalisation of the post 2015 sustainable development agenda, culminated within months of each other with the potential to shape the future of people and planet.
Using large-scale mass-mobilisation campaigns to compel substantive political action at COP-UNFCCC and in the design of the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, Action2015, called for a transparent and inclusive process for the articulation, implementation and monitoring of such a framework.
Its goal is to ensure that concrete actions will be taken and ambitious agreements will be made in 2015, that will reflect local struggles around the world and leave no-one behind.
The United Nations Association of South Africa embarked on a campaign to engage the youth on what their future should be.
Advocacy Against Child Labour
Established in 1950 under apartheid’s segregation laws, the township of Kayamandi was designed to confine Black laborers who worked on the surrounding farms. This deliberate spatial planning created a legacy of severe economic exclusion that persists today. The community now grapples with a 40% unemployment rate, a direct consequence of its original purpose as a reservoir of cheap, disenfranchised labor.
This entrenched poverty fuels a cycle of desperation where harmful coping mechanisms, such as opportunistic child labor, take root. The community’s vulnerability is profoundly compounded by the lasting legacy of the outlawed “Dop System,” where partial payment in wine institutionalized alcohol dependency. This has resulted in persistently high rates of alcoholism, a deep-rooted public health crisis that continues to undermine social cohesion and economic progress.
On June 13, 2015, an engagement campaign targeted Kayamandi’s youth to break this cycle. The initiative promoted education as the fundamental tool for liberation from intergenerational poverty, directly aligning with the missions of SDG 1 (No Poverty) and SDG 4 (Quality Education). The core message was that investing in learning is the most powerful resistance to the systemic injustices of the past.