Widening the Lens: Expanding Ashley Hall’s Commitment to Global Sustainability

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Ashley Hall Life7/16/25

Widening the Lens: Expanding Ashley Hall’s Commitment to Global Sustainability

During the 2024-25 school year, Ashley Hall focused on United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) #3: Good Health and Well-Being. Students engaged in meaningful discussions and initiatives around physical and mental health, access to health care, and global well-being. This emphasis allowed our community to explore health from multiple angles, incorporating science, humanities, service, and wellness into a broader understanding of living a healthy life. We are excited to expand our approach as we look ahead to the 2025-26 school year and the program’s fifth anniversary. Rather than centering on a single goal, Ashley Hall will take a holistic perspective on the UNSDGs, integrating multiple goals into school programming to deepen connections and opportunities for student engagement.

A Broader Approach to the UNSDGs

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals consist of 17 interconnected objectives designed to address global challenges such as poverty, climate change, gender equality, and quality education. By introducing the complete framework in a broad and integrated way, Ashley Hall will provide students with a more comprehensive view of global sustainability and the many ways they can contribute to meaningful change. Through this expanded approach, we will encourage students to explore connections between different goals, understanding how progress in one area—such as health (Goal #3)—is deeply linked to others, like clean water and sanitation (Goal #6) or responsible consumption (Goal #12) continuing our trend of deepening connections across studies and areas of learning and building on the Ashley Hall global perspective. Ashley Hall Community Partnerships and Global Education Coordinator Tylery Moseley is looking forward to the wider angle: “I’m excited for students to have access to more connection-making opportunities as they explore the goals as a whole program. I think shifting our approach to open up conversations about all UNSDGs will allow us to dig deeper into our adoption of the program and make it more accessible. The opportunities are endless; I can’t wait to see where the girls decide to take this project in the coming years and where they focus their energies.”

Expanding Opportunities for Engagement

With this shift, Ashley Hall will work to incorporate multiple UNSDGs into a wide range of programs, ensuring that more students, faculty, and community members can engage with sustainability efforts in diverse ways. This could include:

Academic Integration: Encouraging cross-disciplinary learning that ties curriculum topics to different UNSDGs.
Service Learning & Community Partnerships: Expanding local community outreach efforts to align with a broader range of sustainability goals.
Student-Led Initiatives: Providing opportunities for students to take ownership of projects that align with their interests and specific UNSDGs.
School-Wide Events & Conversations: Hosting discussions, workshops, and activities introducing all 17 goals and their relevance to our daily lives across all school divisions.
New Leadership Opportunities: providing leadership roles for students of all ages to engage with eachother through the UNSDG initiative.

Looking Ahead

By broadening our focus beyond a single goal, the School’s aim is to deepen the community’s understanding of global sustainability and foster a greater sense of responsibility and action. The UNSDGs are not just abstract concepts but a roadmap for shaping a better world. By embracing them as a collective framework, Ashley Hall students will be empowered to explore, innovate, and lead with purpose. As we embark on this new approach, we look forward to seeing how students, faculty, and families engage with these global challenges in ways that are meaningful, inspiring, and impactful.

*This article appears in the 2025 issue of Perspectives magazine. To read the issue in full, please click here.

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Ashley Hall is a K-12 independent school for girls, with a co-ed preschool, committed to a talented and diverse student population. We consider for admission students of any race, color, religion, and national or ethnic origin.