Nidhi Singh selected as a speaker for the International Conference on Sustainable Development 2016
Nidhi Singh
Nidhi Singh (MSc. Law and Finance, 2016/17), a Louis Dreyfus Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Scholar, has been selected to speak at ICSD 2016. Nidhi will speak alongside Dr. Achyuta Samanta, founder of the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS).
To fulfil the volunteering obligation expected of all Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Scholars, Nidhi volunteered to work with KISS in India. KISS is the largest free residential educational institution for indigenous children in India. Starting with only 125 children in 1993, KISS has since developed rapidly to its current state, providing education for 25,000 children in 2015 alone. KISS now has the ambitious goal of educating 2,000,000 poor indigenous children over the next decade. It was recently granted a special consultative status by UN-ECOSOC for its exemplary work done in the field of SDGs.
As a volunteer, Nidhi spent her last summer and Easter break in 2016 with KISS in India studying and helping them prepare a report on their work being done and as to how they are helping achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Nidhi has written about the SDGs in the past on our blog, and you can read her comments here. After her experiences, she co-authored a paper with Dr. Achyuta Samanta and Dwiti Vikramaditya (Senior Adviser to KISS), which was submitted to the UN ICSD for consideration. With only few selected invited speakers, the ICSD represents both a competitive and high-profile platform for discussions on sustainability, and the WHT is very proud that one of our scholars has been selected to participate in such a high-profile event.
You can find out more about KISS via their website. Further details about the International Conference on Sustainable Development can be found here. The conference will be held at Columbia University, New York on 21-22 September 2016, on the eve of the UN Summit on Sustainable Development. The ICSD will host leading academics, scientists and world leaders to discuss the forthcoming implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
