At the outset, it is extremely important to understand and recognise that any initiative that is undertaken from the goodness of one’s heart will always be geared towards the achievement of wellbeing, whether it is at an individual level or for collectives like families, communities, institutions, countries or our planet as a whole. Therefore, to understand what Well-being really means becomes crucial in creating a scale of conscience through which all other initiatives can be measured, and decisions be taken. Of course, the individual is at the centre of any discussion around Well-being and therefore, those who do not understand what it means for themselves can rarely play their part in achieving it for others.

Once we understand Well-being for ourselves, and for the collectives that we are a part of, it starts to become clear that in our world today not all humans are treated equal. If we are to proceed with the rest of our goals, as well as any initiative that seeks to do well for our world, it is crucial to recognise this inequality, and thereafter, ensure that our efforts pay heed to this reality. For us, it was important to identify the core of the very thought of inequality. We put our minds to try and understand where the feeling of treating one as unequal emanates from. Eventually, we arrived at gender being the one distinction that leads to discrimination across all sections of the society, transcending geographical, political, cultural, and communal boundaries. Inequalities based on race, religion, economic conditions, caste, region, ideologies, all exist, but none of them exist across the globe, without exception and in the omnipresent manner that gender discrimination does. Tackling gender inequality also provides for a global opportunity to teach lessons of equality to individuals, and train their mind in a manner where any form of discrimination can then be combatted using the same mindset changes used towards creating gender neutrality. At the end of the day, inequality magnifies differences, differences give rise to conflict and conflict is the antithesis of a peaceful existence.

The understanding of a peaceful existence as one of the consequences of equality, led us down the path of trying to understand what peace really means. In common parlance, and unfortunately, as part of one of the most widely reported realities of our world, peace is mostly used as the antonym of war. This attribution overshadows what is already otherwise a highly neglected aim of human existence, to live in harmony with each other, both with the animate and the inanimate, and therefore to live peacefully. Our aim under this goal is to try and reclaim the meaning of peace and realign our understanding of how it can be achieved.

Once we have understood the art of being well, achieved the mindset that shuns discrimination and promotes equality, and have reinterpreted Peace for ourselves and those around us, it became important for us to address the animate and the inanimate that we spoke of in the previous paragraph in more detail and with equal focus. Our world, and the environment thereof, is more than merely a collection of resources made available to us to serve our exponentially growing needs, an understanding which for centuries has eluded humanity. Today, it is unfortunate that we still have not understood the fact that the resources provided to us are finite and the lack of cohesion with which we interact with our environment is not sustainable.

When an individual embarks upon a journey that is difficult and strenuous, the biggest casualty thereof is invariably their attention to themselves and what otherwise would be their habitual actions. Consequently, we end up weakening ourselves both directly and indirectly at a time where we need ourselves to be at our strongest. For many, the choice of living a hygienic and nutritious life is non-existent because our world today is not one which has our first four goals as its pillars.

On one hand, Hygiene stands to protect us from material harm from the external environment, and on the other, Nutrition reinforces the strength of our physical and mental immunity. Together, they are personal goals that focus on our interactions with the external world and through it, ensure balance between the external world and our internal anatomy. As a collective, our actions towards leading a hygienic life directly impacts the ability of others around us to do so as well, while our understanding of Nutrition also impacts how we view it for others.

Education today is considered to be the pre-requisite for employment and therefore, conversely, employment becomes the end objective of education. For us, Education is beyond the qualifications that one requires to be eligible for a job. It is a much larger construct which encompasses both the assimilation of knowledge, as well as its dissemination. It is relevant for all of our goals till now, to ensure that they are better understood by all of us, better researched and better explained to those around us, both young and old.

In a manner similar to education, employment is viewed as a means to fulfill our material needs, where the word ‘needs’ has been convoluted to include a lot more than what it ‘needs’ to. Employment is not merely a means to earn tradable currency, it is any action that is undertaken in furtherance of our responsibilities towards ourselves and the collectives that we are a part of. It is the ‘what we do’ and ‘how we do it’ of keeping our world well, equal, peaceful in an all-encompassing manner while at the same time ensuring the Hygiene and Nutrition that allows us to do what we have to. Together, both Education and Employment take the first six goals and put them in action in order to ensure that there is structure and focus towards their achievement. Thus, simply stated, the goals of Education and Employment are choosing to, learning to, and continuing to contribute to making the world a better place.