The Be Hope Campaign – shifting the narrative from crisis to possibility

In times when it is becoming increasingly difficult to find common ground, one thing we all share is hope. It surrounds us, uniting us in our aspirations for a better future.

Yinka Ilori, artist

Today, the world marks something it has never marked before: the first ever International Day of Hope. And it could not come at a more urgent time.

Let’s be honest, this year has been exhausting. The headlines have been relentless. Conflict, climate disasters, economic hardship, rising division. For many, it feels like we’re fighting an uphill battle just to stay hopeful. But that’s exactly why we need this day.

Because hope isn’t soft. It isn’t passive. And it certainly isn’t blind.

Hope is a force. A moral imperative. A strategic choice.

That’s what the Be Hope Campaign is all about: not denying the challenges we face, but refusing to be defined by them. Not turning away from hardship, but confronting it with imagination, courage and collective action.

Launched by the Global Goals in collaboration with celebrated artist Yinka Ilori, Be Hope is a global call to remember what unites us and to act on it. At its heart is Hope Island, a striking new artwork designed by Yinka to be a sanctuary of unity and possibility. The installation will appear in iconic locations across the UK, offering people a moment to pause, reflect and reconnect. 

This moment is part of a series of global activations, aiming to shift the narrative from crisis to possibility and mobilise action to deliver on the promise of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Hope is not wishful thinking or blind optimism. It’s built on evidence.

We have good reason to keep going:

• In just one generation, the number of people living in extreme poverty has dropped from one in three to less than one in ten. The most dramatic reduction the world has ever seen.
• Once a death sentence for millions, HIV is no longer winning: over 30 million people now have access to life-saving treatment, up from just 500,000 in 2000.
• Since 2015, 50 million more girls are going to school. Each one with the power to transform her future and her world.
• The rise of renewables has slowed fossil fuel growth by two-thirds. Clean power is now a force, not a forecast.
• And ecosystems are beginning to bounce back. Nearly half of the world’s biodiversity areas are now under protection: from forests to coral reefs.

But we must never be tempted to take progress for granted.

Because, for every barrier we’ve broken through, new ones are being built. And while the SDGs have already made millions of lives better, too many people are being left behind and too much progress remains precarious.

That’s why it matters not only to make progress, but to recognise it, protect it and build on it.

The evidence and stories featured in The Hope Report are proof: quiet victories that don’t always make headlines, but that are transforming lives every day.

Yet, too often those stories go untold. Too often, hope is drowned out by crisis. Progress is dismissed as irrelevant. Exhaustion turns into disengagement.

However, research shows something powerful: while optimists believe things will turn out fine, hopeful people believe they can shape the outcome. Hope is more active than optimism. It pairs willpower with waypower – the drive to act and the belief that a path forward exists.

And right now, as the 2030 deadline for the SDGs draws near, that belief is crucial.

Despite decades of hard-won gains, our path towards a fairer, more sustainable world is faltering. And it’s not because we lack the solutions.

It’s because the conditions that make those solutions possible – smart policy, sustained investment, shared responsibility and local leadership – are under attack.

Chronic underinvestment. Political inaction. Rising authoritarianism. Shrinking civic space. These are dismantling the very foundations that progress depends on.

Just as progress is never inevitable, nor is regression. 

For every system under strain, there are communities still pushing forward. For every rollback, there are movements rising up to protect what matters.

Progress has never come easily.

What matters now is whether we rise to meet this moment — or retreat from it.

The Hope Report is more than a reflection — it’s a roadmap rooted in hope. Hope that’s grounded in solutions, fuelled by evidence and built on solidarity. It outlines five urgent actions that, if taken now, could meaningfully shift the course of progress before 2030:

• Hope Funded: Replenish the Global Fund. Protect what works.
• Hope Learned: Make free education a global guarantee.
• Hope Sustained: Protect forests. Secure the future.
• Hope Unburdened: Break the debt trap. Free the future.
• Hope Reinvested: Tax fairly. Invest boldly.

So today, on the first International Day of Hope, we invite you to pause. Reflect. Reconnect. Visit Hope Island. Explore The Hope Report. Share a story that moved you. Take a stand.

Because hope doesn’t mean closing our eyes to what’s hard.

It means opening them to what’s still possible and choosing to act anyway.

Head to globalgoals.org/behope to discover the campaign and join us.