Malvern’s newest project, the Sustainable Development Goals Dashboard, is a way for the school to listen to the advice of the UN as the school, along with the world, looks to move forward into a brighter future.

The Dashboard is aptly named, taking its name from a set of ideals set by the United Nations in 2015, and creates a tasklist of the seventeen goals set by the council.

“What this dashboard seeks to do is illustrate the work that’s being done with respect to these goals. So for instance, if a project within a school context was working on the goal of improvement of life below water. You could document that, put an abstract together for your work, and then list it so that in this learning community, others can see what’s happening within your project perhaps attached to it, and expand upon it,” Assistant Head of School for Academics Mr. Pat Sillup said.

“By 2030, [the] United Nations wants to see improvement in all these areas, and think of these areas as like the most universal problem set we could possibly imagine,” Sillup continued.

Sillup, who’s currently leading the push on the Dashboard from inside Malvern, sees the Dashboard as a great way to showcase students’ work as they try to push the pen on each of the seventeen goals.

“This is searchable on Google, you can check things out and see that. We think that’s a really nice feature  from a platform perspective, to be able to share and then learn from other schools and what they’re doing within these categories as well, to push our work,” he said.

Malvern’s Dashboard is based on St. Joseph’s University’s website, where several other Universities also house their own Dashboards. However, Malvern is currently the only high school attached, something Sillup hopes changes.

“I’m expecting that to grow and that’s a great thing. What I would love to see is it can be expanded to all Augustinian schools, we can create that kind of a dashboard with a sub category,” he said. “Can we think about Philadelphia region schools, do we start to activate Inter-Ac and Philadelphia region, because I think the more people think about these, the better.”

Vijay Ramakrishnan ‘22 is one of the students working on the Dashboard, who first came on board after Sillup and another student, Daniel Balmer ’22.

“I first got involved when Mr. Sillup brought me into the project alongside Daniel Balmer,” he said. “I was interested in participating in this because I thought it would be a great way for Malvern to show other schools about our impactful work within Malvern and within the local community.”

Right now, Ramakrishnan is working on creating ideas that can be added to the Malvern’s Dashboard.

“I have been brainstorming potential projects that could be added to the SDG Dashboard. I then reach out to the leaders of those projects/groups and ask them if they would be interested in being a part of the Malvern SDG Dashboard. They then write a short abstract about their projects and their impacts on the community and we submit these abstracts to St. Joes,” he said.

So far, Ramakrishnan has found the Dashboard to be productive, and like Sillup, has hopes for growing to other schools.

“So far, we have gathered a number of projects and submitted them to St. Joes. They have approved of the projects and the Malvern SDG dashboard is being put together. In the future, we would like to continue to find other projects and branch out to other schools,” he said.

Ramakrishnan’s partner, Balmer, has done work similar to Ramakrishnan in reaching out to people whose work is eligible to be published on the Dashboard.

“My role in the Dashboard group is to find suitable candidates whose work can be published on the dashboard. I am responsible for reaching out to them to have a discussion about what they are doing, and how they are contributing to one of the 17 sustainable development goals. After that has been completed, I provide them with the necessary instructions to record and summarize their work. Once we have all the information we need, we compile it into a concise document to get ready for publication,” he said.

This far, Balmer has been impressed with the work that he’s reviewed and those behind it.

“So far it has been amazing to see the wide array of projects that are underway within our school community,” he said. “We have so many community members participating in meaningful activities with the sole intention of aiding others. In the future I expect to see even more projects that contribute to one of the SDG’s.”

Balmer expects the Dashboard to transform into a “focal point” at Malvern in the near future, as more and more projects are added.

“I think that many students will be inspired and will want to have their work shown on a public platform like this. We will absolutely encourage any students/faculty that are engaged in interesting projects to speak to us as we want everyone to get the recognition they deserve,” he said.