33 SDG 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation – Team 18

Team Reflection
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal, SDG, our team was assigned was SDG 6: clean water and sanitation. This SDG is vital in the development of countries and the maintenance of a strong nation as clean water and adequate sanitation are human health concerns and basic human rights. The business innovations our team was assigned all touched on the appropriate use of water, how to recycle and reuse water, and how the environment plays a role in these aspects. These innovations are important to take note of as they take the United Nations SDGs in their development and their use to better the societies they are used in.

An example of one of our business innovation stories is Pure Water S.A.S, a household-based water filter innovation based in Colombia. This innovation helps to ensure that everyone receives clean, sanitized water which is an issue in Colombia, according to the AIM2Flourish story. This innovation would benefit all of our countries in unique ways as each of our countries has some sort of issue with water sanitization in some area. We all agree that having clean water and appropriate sanitization practices is vital for a healthy life and this SDG-focused business innovation works to ensure that.

Working through these AIM2Flourish stories helped us to better our understanding of existing innovations that are being used to better the lives of other people in countries other than our own. This information is important for young people such as us to know because we can work toward discovering new innovations that can be used in our own countries and help to improve the water quality in our communities or communities that need our support in their fight for clean water and sanitization. One thing that we were surprised by was the number of rainwater repurposing filters. Something so simple and often overlooked was being used in so many different forms as seen in our assigned innovation stories, which was a nice surprise. Our assumptions on how businesses should help their communities were met; we believe that businesses should give back to their communities in any way possible. Businesses giving back to their communities is found in each of the AIM2Flourish stories which aligns with our views.

Corporate social responsibility, CSR, is a broad term that is used to explain how businesses are expected to take an active role in their communities while still making their expected economic profits. Each of these businesses are perfect examples of how CSR works in a real-life context when businesses make an effort to improve the world around them. On paper, CSR looks easy and convinces you that all companies should be making CSR efforts and those that are not are evil corporations. However, these businesses show that committing to CSR takes a conscious effort and calls for a large reconstruction of the company’s business model.

Moving forward in our lives, the COIL experience has allowed and encouraged us to think outside the box of basic business innovations and reconstruct existing items to improve their purpose, consequently improving lives. This experience has taught us how to think critically about the information we were provided; would this innovation work the way the creators intended? Would this innovation work in our own countries? Was this innovation created with the triple bottom line in mind or just the economic profit of the business? Thinking critically about the information we are provided is a key aspect of post-secondary learning and as students, we need to ask inquisitive questions to verify the reality of said information.

Our team learned what CSR implementation looks like for countries other than our own, we learned about similar issues that our countries face regarding clean water and sanitization, and we learned how to work as a team that spanned three countries and different time zones. We used course content to supplement our learning by explaining to each other what it was we had learned that connected to the weekly questions. This enabled us to better understand the material we had learned in class because we had real-life examples as well as allowing us to learn from each other. In the division of the work, we had one group member, Emma, organize and submit the documents, and the rest of us would choose sections of the weekly questions we would work on. This seemed to work pretty well but we should have met earlier in the week to give more time to finish the weekly assignments. We also had struggles with finding a successful way to have group contact as one of our group members could not join the WhatsApp group we had made. Otherwise, we had a very successful group experience, we made connections with students from around the world, and we learned from each other how we as a society can improve the struggles faced by so many as outlined in the United Nations SDGs.

Individual Reflections
Emma Christie
Getting the chance to take part in the COIL experience was a brilliant opportunity for me as a student and as a member of a society that is striving toward a sustainable future. Learning from my peers, and seeing how their cultures deal with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal we were provided with were both very enlightening aspects of this experience. Being immersed in Canadian issues and working to find potential solutions for so long allowed me to disconnect from shared universal issues; I did not know that Spain had issues with providing water to those who live in remote communities akin to Canada. It was interesting and unfortunate to see that these issues were shared across our seemingly different countries. The COIL experience allows for students to learn how other cultures deal with sustainable development issues which is a very important aspect of global sustainable changes.

Shelby Girdler
The activity encourages a group of individuals to deepen the horizons of cultural perspective. Having the opportunity for diversity has various benefits when in a group. My perspective on this experiment has shown me the various benefits presented, including having different perspectives on issues, as well as the ability to conclude to more versatile solutions, lastly allowing the individuals within the group to gain a different insight on different topics. Since our group talked about exclusively sustainable development it encouraged different opinions on each of the innovations, and produced topics on each of the stories that were presented to us. While discussing the Sustainable Development Goals, it also gave a deeper understanding of the goals, innovations aimed to help, and the purpose of the goals overall.