(Upon selection of at most 3 goals) Choose goals that best resonate with your course of study
(200 words)
This prompt wants you to show a clear, logical connection between your field, your experience, and the specific SDGs you chose; not just name the goals, but explain why your work directly addresses them. Make sure you chosen course of study directly links to the SDG goals.
Paragraph 1
Name the Goals and Establish the Connection
Open by naming your selected SDGs and immediately showing how they are linked to each other in your specific national or sectoral context. Do not treat them as separate; show why they are two sides of the same problem.
What to include in your essay:
The SDGs you selected and why they are interconnected in your context.
A specific data point or reality that illustrates how the problem drives both goals simultaneously.
A personal or observed experience that shows you have seen this connection firsthand.
Paragraph 2
How Your Study Addresses the Goals
Connect your programme directly to the SDGs. Show that the skills and knowledge you are gaining are not general — they are targeted at the specific mechanisms that sustain the problem you identified.
What to include in your essay:
The specific areas of study that map onto each SDG.
What you will be able to do after the programme that you cannot do now.
A concrete post-study intervention that advances both goals at once.
Paragraph 3
The Bigger Commitment
Close by zooming out from the technical to the personal and collective. Show that your commitment to these goals goes beyond your career plan, it is rooted in something you have lived and extends to something larger than yourself.
What to include in your essay:
A personal statement that grounds the SDG work in your own story.
A vision of the broader impact you hope to contribute to.
A closing line that connects individual action to collective progress.
PARAGRAPH 1
My work connects directly to SDG 2 – Zero Hunger and SDG 1 – No Poverty. These two goals are interconnected in Nigeria when it comes to Agriculture. You see, when farmers grow food, 40 per cent of it never reaches the consumers. This means there is insufficient food transfer and an irrefutable surge in price. It becomes very hard for low-income families to afford food. The farmers absorb those losses personally, staying trapped in poverty despite full seasons of hard work. I have seen both sides of this in my own home.
Technique:
This paragraph does not just name the SDGs; it immediately shows why they belong together in this context. The post-harvest loss figure is the connective thread: it explains how the same systemic failure simultaneously drives hunger for consumers and poverty for farmers.
Breakdown:
Naming both SDGs in the opening sentence and immediately connecting them avoids the common mistake of treating them as parallel rather than linked.
"40 per cent of it never reaches the consumers" is a precise, memorable figure that makes the systemic failure concrete.
"Staying trapped in poverty despite full seasons of hard work" reframes farmer poverty as a structural problem, not a productivity problem — which is a more sophisticated development argument.
"I have seen both sides of this in my own home" closes with personal testimony that gives the paragraph emotional credibility without overpowering the argument.
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