Former UN Youth Delegate and ASSIST Alum Barbora Kvasničková is Dedicated to Youth Representation in Climate Policy

By Camille Wilson

The data speaks for itself—it’s no secret that young people (people in their teenage years and early 20s) will continue to be a driving force behind environmental awareness and climate policy reform. ASSIST alum Barbora Kvasničková ‘17 is a former representative of Czechia (also known as the Czech Republic) to the United Nations, and is currently working to promote the involvement of young people in the politics of the climate issue while studying climate policy in the Netherlands. 

As a youth delegate from 2019 to 2020, she was one of two young representatives who were selected to bring the concerns of Czech youth to the forefront at the UN, attending climate conferences like the Youth Climate Summit and COP26. 

“The aim of the UN Youth Delegates program is to bridge what’s happening with young people in Czechia and the UN,” Barbora explains. “Czechia has just recently established this program and every year there are 2 delegates. The work looks different depending on the country and delegation, but my work was mostly participating in conferences, researching, gathering people’s input from different NGO’s. It’s not a paid position, you’re a volunteer, but you do have the opportunity to change things. We had a lot of power as youth delegates.”

In addition to focusing on large-scale climate policy, Barbora is equally invested in the small steps towards change. Most recently, Barbara’s time is spent studying at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, researching environmental “problem shifting,” and working as a youth representative for the Czech Council of Children and Youth. Problem shifting in this context refers to when governments make decisions intended to solve environmental problems, but that “solution” ultimately births even more insidious problems. Read more on that here. 

“I’m currently studying climate change policy, and I’m doing some research on problem shifting and the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). I have access to technical group meetings at the ministry on behalf of the Czech Council of Children and Youth. I’m also involved with a platform called Youth, Speak Up in Prague. Our [Czechia’s] economy is really dependent on fossil fuels, and it’s a platform to negotiate how to protect the people who will be the most affected by this sudden shift away from fossil fuel energy. My work is to raise awareness from the perspective of young people.”

Before traveling to the US to study through ASSIST at Tower Hill School in Delaware, Barbora lived a fairly normal life for a high school student, and climate activism wasn’t really on her radar. 

“I was studying at a super nice secondary school in Czechia, and my life was centered around whatever was happening at that high school,” she recalls. “I also did a year abroad at a school in France. At the time, I had turned vegan for the sake of climate change, and I thought this was my contribution [to climate action]. But it wasn’t a common thing that people were educated about, and I was ashamed to speak about it. I even ate meat at the host family’s house.”

As for her ASSIST experience, she looks back on her time at Tower Hill School fondly, and she feels as though she can be helpful to others because of it. 

“It has impacted my life in many ways,” Barbora notes. “I got to have a second family who I grew close to, I had a new boyfriend and a whole new life there, I even had the opportunity to meet Joe Biden. I felt empowered having this experience of living in the States and going to a good high school, and doing it all on my own. I think I gained some confidence from that. And I now have some advice for young people from Czechia who are wanting to study abroad. I think it made me realize that as citizens we have more power than we think, and we can use it for something good. Even though the workload was really stressful!”