The non-profit, educationally-oriented publisher Reading With Pictures announced today that it was partnering with the United Nations to produce a series of 17 comics that will explain and promote the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which will be ratified in September. 

The Sustainable Development Goals are a “to-do” list for the planet that will tackle the problems of extreme poverty, education, gender equality, disease prevention, and providing potable water, to name just a few of areas in which the UN feels that comics can be used to help people improve their lives.  The fact that comics will be used to explain and get support for such important initiatives is further proof of the acceptance of the medium and of the growing appreciation for its ability to present important concepts in memorable ways.

RWP, in partnership with PCI Media Impact and PVBLIC Foundation, will be working in close coordination with the United Nations Post-2015 Development Planning Team and with the United Nations Millennium Campaign acting as a global engagement partner to the initiative to create a series of seventeen comics designed to educate and inspire action among readers around the world. The finished comics will be made available in multiple languages and then distributed in print and for free online to a global audience that is expected to number in the tens of millions.  RWP is currently conducting a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the initiative.

This project grew out of a chance meeting at the New York Comic Con between the UN’s Natabara Rollosson and Reading With Pictures founder Josh Elder.  “It was the most fortuitous chance meeting of my life,” notes Elder. “Reading With Pictures was founded on the belief that comics are a kind of universal visual language, one that’s ideal for communicating important concepts to diverse audiences. Concepts don’t get any more important than the Global Goals, and audiences don’t get any more diverse than the entirety of the human race.”