Scientific animations without borders (SAWBO): an innovative strategy for promoting education for sustainable development

Whilethe United Nations Millennium Declaration identified several key benchmarks for sustainable development, the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (ASD) now reaffirms, refines, and retools those sustainable development goals for the next 15 years. Specifically, theASDcalls for developing andextendingopportunities for transitions to sustainable societiesa goal that necessarily includes more sustainable research practices capable of fostering the uptake ofthe values, behaviors, strategies, and lifestyles required to realize a sustainable future for all people and societiesas well. This paper describes one such sustainable practice project: Scientific Animations Without Borders (SAWBO). Housed at Michigan State University in the United States, at all levels of its ESDproject,SAWBO enacts a collaborative, flexible, adaptive, and resilient practice with global and local, scientific and indigenous, knowledge expertsin order to transfer scientifically grounded knowledge about agricultural, public health, and socioeconomicissues of public concern to rural areas of Africa and other places affected by those concerns. SAWBO's principle medium of transferusesanimated, linguistically localized, educational videos,distributed free of cost, and intended to be both readily accessible and easily shared by all types of audiences, but especially by low-literate adult learners in developing regions.As such,SAWBO's ESD approachaddressesmany of Agenda 2030's 17 Global Goals and aligns with theglobal effort to develop educational approaches that are not onlyeconomically, but alsosocially and environmentally, sustainable. As a project, SAWBO also embodiesa model of sustainability education practice adaptable to different methodologies across a variety of spaces and educational levels and is itself also methodologically sustainable.