Everyone wants to live in a better world. Yet grinding poverty, disease, conflict, environmental degradation and climate change continue to blight the lives and stifle the potential of billions of people.

It doesn't have to be like this.

World leaders have repeatedly made promises to everyone that we will collectively address these issues. The grandest set of these promises are the Sustainable Development Goals, one of the most ambitious sets of commitments ever made. They promise a transformation of our world: one where all people live happy, fulfilling lives. But we are not on track with these goals and time and again leaders take actions - or take no actions - that do nothing to meet those promises. There are almost no areas where we need to do better to meet the fantastic goals and commitments already in place.

So it can feel as if the multitude of commitments made are irrelevant to what actually happens. Governments, businesses, and other organisations and individuals with power to change things continually fail to live up to the promises they have made. This failure is happening at all levels in society. It feeds a deadly cynicism.

"We need leaders to do what they said they'd do," is the heart of AAccountability.

AAcountability exists because doing accountability work is hard: it always involves spending personal and political energy to hold those with power to account for promises they have made, and it is rare that powerful people appreciate being held to account on anything other than their own terms.

Accountability work is not just an art, though, it is a set of processes and skills that can be learned and applied like any other. AAccountability can help with that learning and the application of it.