We Gave The World Goals. We Never Gave Anyone A Role.
"Drop a pebble in the water, and one small ripple can reach further than you think. Big change starts with a single simple action." - David Hudson
Photo by Sergej Eckhardt
Hello Everyone
I'm David Hudson. I founded 169to1.
In 2015 the world agreed seventeen goals and 169 targets. As drafting goes, it was a fine piece of work. It came with no job description.
Nobody told a head teacher what to do on Monday morning. Nobody told the owner of a twelve-person firm, or the volunteer running a food bank. And nobody told any of them that 76 of the 169 targets can only be moved by a change in law. I counted.
We did not fail the SDGs because we did not care. We failed them because caring was all we were asked to do.
A Definition That Works
In 1987 the Brundtland Report defined sustainable development in 23 words. I wanted one sentence a twelve-year-old and a finance director could both use, and I got it to twelve:
Sustainability is the process of living today, so that tomorrow is protected.
Let me show you something simple - 6174
Now you are probably wondering why did I give you a random four digit number?
Because selecting a simple number can show the power of a steady process.
It’s called ‘The Kaprekar Constant’, 6174, appears to be an ordinary number, yet it reveals something important. If you take almost any four-digit number, reorder its digits from largest to smallest, subtract, and repeat the sequence, the process always settles at 6174. It does not matter where you begin. The steps create the stability.
Here is what happens with my own birth year, 1976.
1976 → 9761 − 1679 = 8082
8082 → 8820 − 0288 = 8532
8532 → 8532 − 2358 = 6174
The pattern always converges. It works because the steps are clear and repeatable. This is the point. A clear, repeatable method turns disorder into direction. The number is not special. The process is.
169to1 works in the same way. You focus on one SDG target, take one action, record one piece of evidence, and continue the cycle. No matter how uncertain the wider world becomes, the structure holds. The pathway remains stable because the method is simple.
The Kaprekar Constant shows that even from a random starting point, a consistent sequence leads to a clear conclusion. That is the benchmark behind 169to1. A steady process that creates progress, step by step, for everyone.
Incidentally, D. R. Kaprekar was a schoolteacher in Devlali. He found this in 1949, with no grant and no institution behind him.
So with that in mind, we can also make the very definition of ‘Sustainability’ simple too.
One Institution. One Target. One Deadline.
Multiply that by 169,000. One percent of the world's schools, businesses, NGO teams and youth movements. Enough to move the numbers.
I have spent nearly thirty years solving problems in places where nobody was waiting with a roadmap: schools with no budget, firms with no time, community groups holding things together with goodwill. More than 60 sectors, across the UK, Latin America, the Middle East and Europe.
In June 2026 the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network reached the conclusion this work was built on: the goals were never the failure, and implementation is the work left. I do not claim they took it from me. I note that it took the field nine years to arrive where we started.
The Question I Intend To Answer
My daughter Daphne was born the same year as the SDGs, or as some say, generation alpha. She is eleven now. By the end of this challenge she will be fifteen. One day she is going to ask me what I did, and how she can get involved.
I intend to answer with evidence.
That is where 169to1 begins. Here is how it works.
