Most everyone knows that money alone won’t solve the world’s problems. Money is important. But, ultimately, it is the people of the world who will bring about the necessary changes required to end poverty, heal the environment, and make peace.

Too often, however, that idea is not foremost in the minds of policymakers, who often focus on the technical and financial methods at their disposal.

With that in mind, a group of non-governmental organizations, in collaboration with Romania’s UN mission, organized a side event during post-2015 intergovernmental negotiations in late April to discuss how to increase participation in all aspects of sustainable development.

Formally titled “Unlocking People's Capacity as a Means of Implementation of the Post-2015 Agenda: The human face of financing for development,” the event was held at UN headquarters in New York on 24 April 2015.

“Right now member states are discussing the Financing for Development and means of implementation to make ODA and domestic resources available to the SDGs,” said Maria Fare Garcia, a policy analyst with the UN Millennium Development campaign, a respondent at the event.

“Most of the conversations are around financing and technology, but there is also an invisible yet massive asset that can contribute to the achievement of the new agenda: the people.”

Oana Maria Rebedea, second secretary of the Permanent Mission of Romania to the UN, stressed the importance of civil society participation generally in both formulating and, later, achieving the proposed sustainable development goals (SDGs).

“The SDGs are a once-in-a-generation opportunity to catalyze the transformative change needed to end extreme poverty, improve human well-being, and protect our shared planetary home,” said Ms. Rebedea.

“We need to imagine a new architecture for a new global partnership” between governments and civil society, she said, emphasizing that civil society participation is crucial not just for policy formation but also monitoring and implementation.

“Civil society actors are in a position to spot emerging problems,” she said.

Unfortunately, she added, the space for civil society to operate independently in many countries is “shrinking.” What is needed, then, are “minimum legal and regulatory enabling provisions for civil society to operate effectively.”

Other speakers agreed that civil society is crucial in implementing the post-2015 agenda, adding also that a greater effort must be made to encourage and enable the participation of the most vulnerable and marginalized groups.

“Our group feels that people’s participation is the key means of implementation,” said Priscilla Opa Kare, executive director of the Papua New Guinea Education Advocacy Network (PEAN) and a representative of Beyond 2015, one of the sponsors of the side event.

She said, for example, that volunteering is a “powerful and cross-cutting means of implementation” that expands and mobilizes constituencies and engages people in the national planning and implementation of the post-2015 agenda.

Anna Keye of the International Women’s Health Coalition said a post-2015 development agenda cannot succeed if polices do not include a gender perspective.

“Current policies have contributed to a world where women make up the majority of those living in poverty, are the majority of informal and agricultural workers, and are the most vulnerable to natural disasters,” said Ms. Keye. “In other words, the current policies are not working for women and girls.”

Ms. Keye said greater participation by girls and women could be enabled through better access to health services, enhanced efforts to stop violence against women, and improved education and economic empowerment programs for women.

Other speakers included Catharina Gehrke, chief executive officer of SOS Children’s Villages Sweden and Vladimir Cuk, executive director of the New York office of the International Disabilities Alliance. A number of participants in the side event also made comments after the main presentation.

Serik Tokbolat, a representative of the Baha’i International Community, which also co-sponsored the event, said the goals proposed in the post-2015 process will undoubtedly require the mobilization of resources on a scale never before attempted.

“The talents and abilities of people constitute a critical means of accomplishing this work,” he said, adding that “questions must be addressed about how to galvanize the human resources needed to achieve transformative global progress and the ways to develop participatory and inclusive mechanisms for the implementation of the post-2015 agenda at all levels.”

He noted that the working paper for the event was based in part on a recent statement of the Baha’i International Community to the Commission on Social Development, which also stressed the importance of “unlocking human capacity in order to achieve development goals.

“As we said in that statement, we must challenge the notion that access to financial resources is the only way that meaningful contributions can be made to development,” said Mr. Tokbolat

“Material wealth is often equated with capacity, but we see human capacity as defined to a greater extent by what people themselves choose to do, and the degree to which they are empowered to do it.”

“True people-centered development, then, must include participatory mechanisms and enabling environments that encourage and allow this natural stirring from the grassroots,” said Mr. Tokbolat.