Jolly Amatya (जोली अमात्य in Nepali) is a Nepali youth activist based in the United States. In August 2016, Amatya created media headlines in Nepal when she was appointed Youth Chair of the UN Youth Assembly during its summer assembly at the UN Headquarters in New York. Jolly is the youngest and the first Nepali youth to hold the post in the history of the United Nations.
Jolly is the sister of Kanchan Amatya, the founder and CEO of Sustainable Fish Farming Initiative who was named in Forbes magazine’s 30 under 30 Asia list.
Early Life and Education
Amatya was born on 26 February 1990 in Lalitpur as the eldest daughter to father Jagadishman Amatya and mother Krishna Amatya, and spent her childhood in Kathmandu, Nepal. She attended Kathmandu’s prestigious St. Mary’s School and finished a higher secondary degree, before moving to the United States in 2009, to pursue higher education.
While in the United States, Jolly attended Coe College, Iowa for an undergraduate degree in finance and studied auditing at Harvard Summer School.
|
Professional Career
Jolly Amatya has taken up different leadership roles in the past. As of 2016, apart from the role of Youth Chair at the UN Youth Assembly, she served as a board member and as a finance committee executive at the US National Committee for UN Women (USNC). She also served as an Ambassador at Heal a Woman to Heal a Nation, Inc., a US-based grassroots organisation that promotes wellness for women and families through education.
Jolly has also been involved with organisations such as the WFUNA, the World Bank, Action Aid and Habitat for Humanity in the past. In addition, she has represented Nepal at the White House AAPI Youth Forum and was awarded the Young Global Leader Achievement award in 2015 by the Global Connections for Women Foundation in New York.
After being involved in the UN Youth Assembly for three years and once serving as a co-chair, in August 2016, Jolly got the opportunity to chair the UN Youth Assembly. Addressing its summer assembly, Jolly called on youths to become change-makers and emphasized the importance of fighting climate change. “We are not just the leaders of tomorrow, we are the leaders of today,” she emphasized. She also talked about global peace and conflict issues and the need for united global humanitarian assistance.
Her appointment as the youth chair was widely reported mainly by media outlets in Nepal and the Nepali diaspora, but also by international media agencies. A Huffington Post columnist wrote a piece on her: Harvard Alumni Nepali Youth Inspires the World From the UN Headquarters.
Elaborating on her experience as the Youth Chair, Jolly said:
As the Youth Chair of The Youth Assembly at the United Nations, it was a great privilege for me to welcome more than 1000 outstanding delegates representing almost 100 countries from all over the world at the United Nations headquarters.
As of May 2019, Jolly serves as the Secretariat of The United Nations Major Group for Children and Youth. In April 2019, Amatya addressed the General Assembly at the UN during the 100th Anniversary of the establishment of the International Labour Organization (ILO) where she said: “the transitions young people care about are not just from school to work, but from ageist, undemocratic aristocracies to governance structures that are inclusive of all and based upon intergenerational dialogue, participation and collaboration. We do not need individual leaders, we need Collective action based on Universality and Equity.”
Amatya lives in Washington DC, the USA with her siblings.
