Nowadays the contributions made by corporate and family foundations in achieving social transformation in Colombia are undeniable. At the Association of Corporate and Family Foundations (AFE) in Colombia, we have identified that to achieve social change we need to work with the support of strategic partners.

Under this perspective, the Post-2015 Partnership Platform for Philanthropy and Private Social Investment, hereinafter the Post-2015 Platform, globally led by UNDP, the Foundation Center, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and the Ford, Conrad N Hilton and Mastercard Foundations, represents an ideal and favourable scenario for the achievement of social transformation.

As AFE, which currently represents 58 foundations, our main interest is to maximize the impact of social interventions and contribute to equality and sustainable social development in the country.

For AFE, it is a privilege that Colombia has been selected as one of the pilot projects to launch this Platform, and even more to be the local strategic partner of the Post-2015 Platform. Our participation as local partners will allow our foundations to approach the new global agenda for development in a more effective and efficient manner. The Platform will enable us to strengthen ties to generate the social change for which our member foundations daily strive.

We wholeheartedly agree with the concept presented by Colombia in the Rio+20 Summit of directing the global agenda towards more comprehensive goals. The SDGs consider global reality from an economic, social and environmental perspective, based on the idea that development is not achieved through working from just one perspective.

We are sure that no efforts to achieve peace and social transformation will become tangible without the comprehensive articulation of each and every one of the SDGs that are being discussed today all over the world.

The new SGD global agenda is not foreign to foundation members of AFE. In an analysis of the work of our members, we found that they are all involved in each of the different challenges presented by the SDGs, in particular the following:

Goal 1  End poverty in all its forms everywhere

Goal 4   Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Goal 8   Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

Goal 10   Reduce inequality within and among countries

Goal 11   Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal 16   Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

With the aim of augmenting the efforts of the Post-2015 Platform, while recognizing that all issues raised in the SDGs represent major challenges in our country, we decided, jointly with the UNDP and the international partners of this initiative, to focus our work on Goals 8, 11 and 16, which revolve around, sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all, sustainable cities and the promotion of peaceful societies.

We believe that through these three goals, and working in a comprehensive and coordinated manner, we can achieve changes and integrate other issues raised in the SDGs, such as reducing poverty and improving the quality of education. If we achieve peace in our country, through sustained growth and inclusive, safe and fair cities, some of the causes of poverty, such as the lack of income, may be offset in the mid term. Economic growth alone is not enough to eradicate poverty.

Our immediate commitment as local partner for the Post-2015 Platform specifically translates into:

• Bringing AFE members closer to the Post-2015 Platform with the objective of having them include the SDGs in their strategic plans
• Offering necessary, timely and accurate information, generated by our foundations through our Project Strategy Platform, to the SDGfunders.org platform, led by the Foundation Center
• Coordinating joint processes between local and international players for building alliances for SDG development

We trust that the Post-2015 Platform will effectively augment the work of social players and philanthropists everywhere to meet the challenges that the world will face in implementing the SDGs.

Carolina Suarez is executive director of AFE (Association of Corporate and Family Foundations) Colombia.