[2020 HIDDEN ECO-HERO AWARDS] Give your ‘Recommendation’ to vote for your nominee.
 

■ Name: Shreya K.C. (Nepal)

 
 
■ Nominated by Meena Pandey

 
 
■ Introduction to her organization

Nepalese Youth for Climate Action (NYCA)
Shreya is the National Network Coordinator of NYCA. She served as a volunteer in NYCA from 2016 to 2018 and as a School and College Coordinator of NYCA from 2018-2019. NYCA is the largest youth lead coalition of the Nepalese youth and youth groups tackling the climate crisis, the biggest challenge of our generation. NYCA runs throughout Nepal with its fourteen regional chapters and engages 400 youths across Nepal in climate action. NYCA educates, empowers, inspires, and mobilizes young people for climate action and environmental conservation across Nepal. Being a face of the network, Shreya leads the overall team and works of NYCA and promote environmental and climate campaigns in Nepal.
 

■ Achievement summary

As Nelson Mandela stated, “Education is the weapon one can use to change the world”. She strongly believes in the power of education and youth power. Standing on her value, she taught “Science and Environment” in a local school for two years, where she established a Green Club and engaged the students and teachers in different environmental rallies and campaigns. She collected the old books of the students and sent them to the students in rural villages of Nepal. She has played a vital role in uplifting the Nepali youth climate momentum and the public attitude towards climate and environment, over the past four years, through several grass-root level campaigns. A few of them are Earth Day Campaign, Maskmandu 3, Environment Day Campaign, Rise for Climate, Global Day of Action, COP activities, and Red Alert on Climate. She has awared students of more than 15 schools and engaged them in meaningful conversation on environmental protection and individual roles towards our mother nature, Earth. She prioritizes policy advocacy as an effective way of activism. Keeping this in her heart, she has been leading actively for the prioritization of young people in the ENDC, the climate action plan of Nepal prepared to stay in line with 1.5 degrees of the Paris Agreement. She and her team, recently submitted the National Young People’s Comments to the draft of the climate action plan to the Focal Point of the Ministry. No doubt, she has played an integral role in empowering hundreds of young people in climate action through the Sixth and Seventh National Youth Conference on Climate Change and being a National Coordinator of Nepalese Youth for Climate Action. Through her research in Urban flooding, she is also preparing to help the community near the Karmanasha river, to mitigate and adapt to the severe impacts of the urban floods, especially the urban poor. She has also represented Nepal in COP 25 and COY 15 and gave the closing intervention on behalf of all the youth and youth organizations. She was the only youth who spoke at the Sagarmatha National Sambaad, organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nepal, and explained the significance of listening to young people and taking climate actions NOW. Frequently, she speaks youth voices at various conferences and events to motivate fellow young peoples and asking leaders to believe in young minds.

■ Purpose of her activities

With our acquaintance of just a few years, I have found her extremely passionate about the environment and climate. She knows what works best and what needs to be elaborated more. I have seen her grow from a mere teenage girl, who was quite introverted to a National Youth face for the climate, who now empowers several youths on related issues. The empathy within her and her ability to mainstream every person equally has made her an exemplary leader in NYCA. Through NYCA, she is impactfully leading 400 Nepali youths in climate action. She always feels that we can do more if our government and CSOs support and trust in us. We can transform the projections and bring a real impact to the ground. To do so, she doesn’t follow the transformation; instead, she focuses on dialogues and communications with fellow youth organizations and government officials. And, to surprise, the coordination and trust among each other are growing well in recent days. Her biggest inspiration is her mother, who always makes the optimum utilization of resources and spread positivity through one’s work and words. She follows Jamie Margolin, from Zero Hour and Extinction Rebellion. They provide her the courage and optimism to be a warrior for climate change in Nepal. Nepal lies in the top 5 countries to suffer from the gravest consequences of climate change. Seeing the already vulnerable people suffering more due to the climate crisis, she stands being the voice of those several voiceless people. She spends most of her time in the environment and climate-related activities. She feels a different kind of peace to invest herself in this existential challenge to humanity and urge every youth to work for the betterment of the environment be it with education, activism, or else.

■ Achievements and influences

Shreya was awarded by Her Excellency, President Bidhya Devi Bhandari for her speech on “Connecting People to Nature” on World Environment Day 2017.  Through her Green Club, she engaged more than 500 students and teachers in environmental conservation through activities such as Drama on Plastic Pollution in the Annual Parent’s Day of the School. Her school declared itself as Plastic Free Zone after this initiative.
Through the Public Drama, she and her team demonstrated in Patan Durbar Square, a UNESCO heritage site, about 2000 people were awared about climate change and the importance of taking small actions such as banning chemical fertilizers and holding our leaders accountable. A Documentary screening followed by Flash Mob was also done to make people understand the real impacts of climate change. Many people applauded the initiative and became a part of the network. She has reached more than 15 different schools to aware children about climate change and the environment. Plantations were done in two schools, now the care of the tree is done by the student itself. Due to the regular cleaning activities and awareness to the local people, the road of Sadobato which used to be quite polluted before is slowly being clean and people seem to be more conscious of their waste maintaining a clean and healthy community. Thousands of youths are connected with her network, NYCA. 308 youths were recently empowered in climate science through the 7th National Youth Climate Change Conference. She also utilizes media as a tool for advocacy and reaches remote youths, too through social media and writing blogs. She has been a delegate of Nepal to COP 25 and COY 15 and spoken in National Youth Stakeholders Consultation, National Youth Forum on SDGs, Sagarmatha Sambaad to name a few. She has received a Youth Climate Scholarship in 2019.

■ Future plans

As someone who is keen on spreading science-based information on climate and the environment, she plans to continue working in this field. She wants to aware more young people to take a stand for the planet, today itself. Being a student of Environmental Science, she wants to engage in research and collecting the correct data needed for advocacy and planning the actions. Climate Awareness is still inadequate in Nepal. As young students are the responsible citizens of tomorrow and a powerful change agent of today, she plans to work with schools and students on a deeper level and translate environment education from a mere theoretical subject to a practical one, and which will inspire students to make a change. She states, “Dialogue is important. We should have an environment to listen to each other and draw conclusions’. Thus, she wants to establish a climate café in the near future, where people can talk about climate and the environment and develop more knowledge in this matter. Other than that, on a larger scale, she wants to explore the connections between the regional youth and organizations and work together. Her vision is to have a Youth Focal Point at the Ministry of Forest and Environment of Nepal, who will coordinate the youth-related works from a national level and transform the policies to implementation and action.