KSU International Student Advises U.N. as a Youth Delegate

Nahuel Gorostiza represents his home country of Argentina.

International student, Nahuel Gorostiza, experienced a unique opportunity during his first year at Kent State University. Last month, he was called upon by the United Nations to represent his home country of Argentina as a Youth Delegate.

The United Nations recently gathered youth delegates from all over the world to discuss its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes 17 checkpoints and goals we as a society must reach before 2030.  “What they (the United Nations) decided to do is make youth delegates a part of the general assembly, because current delegates may not be here in 16 years.  (The youth delegates) will be responsible for figuring out how to implement the agenda and see it through,” Gorostiza said.

Generally, according to Gorostiza, the Youth Delegate is chosen because he or she is the Youth Minister of each country. However, Gorostiza was chosen because he had been involved in Argentinian politics from a young age and is passionate about the subject.  “I wasn’t expecting this at all but I’m so happy I get to do this and represent my country,” he said.

Before coming to the U.S for college, Gorostiza lived in Buenos Aires and acted as the youth advisor to presidential candidate, Mauricio Macri before he was elected in December 2015.

“I was very active in the campaign back home. I was campaigning every weekend since I was 11. I traveled all over the country and attended all of the events. They really respected the way I worked,” Gorostiza said.  In the elections, his goal as youth advisor was to get the younger population to vote, and ultimately, that’s the percentage that swayed the election.

Before the elections, Gorostiza made the hard decision to come to the United States to study, but he was still connected to the Argentinian campaign. During the elections in October and December, he was designated to go to the Argentinian Consulate in Chicago to represent his political party.

Surprisingly, Gorostiza is not majoring in political science at Kent State University.  He attended a technical high school in Buenos Aires for computer science, where he received his Associate’s Degree.  Although he is currently a Computer Science major, he is considering changing it to Digital Science to learn more about the communication and business aspects of technology. After becoming successful in his desired field, he would eventually like to engage in politics in Argentina and his overall goal is to become a high-level politician for his country.

According to Gorostiza, “I want to approach politics from a professional side after I have an established career.  I believe that politicians, back in Argentina and all over the world, are usually lawyers or majored in political science.  I’d like to change that.  We need something different, like engineers or businessmen, because they have a different point of view.”