As a young innovator from North Macedonia, Angela Busheska ‘25 has a long list of achievements. From opening a nonprofit and online application that promotes sustainability to developing online dashboards that educate the Easton area on environmental problems, she has strived to make a greater change in all her communities. Last week, she had the opportunity to demonstrate her leadership on a worldwide scale.
From Sept. 5 to Sept. 8, Busheska attended the One Young World Summit in Manchester, England. The summit was a forum for young leaders from over 200 countries around the world to join forces and help solve challenges such as climate change, gender inequality and ocean conservation.
Busheska joined the summit through Deloitte, an international professional services network. They accepted her application to assist in their projects and to gain exposure in the working world, specifically in the climate change sector.
For Busheska, climate change is the problem that she was most looking forward to discussing. Being from North Macedonia–a country where over 2,000 people die as a direct result of air pollution, according to the European Union–the current state of the climate is an issue that hits close to home. For the past few years, she has been developing an app that aims to help people reduce their carbon footprint on a daily basis.
At the summit, she was able to hear from other world leaders and scholars about how she could further develop her app. Based on the feedback from her peers, she is currently working on further enhancing a component of the app that deals with reducing people’s consumption of fast fashion through shopping more sustainably. Fast fashion refers to low-priced, stylish clothing that moves quickly from design to retail stores to meet trends, according to investopedia.com.
“I gained insight on things that I never would have thought about,” Busheska said.
In addition to engaging in dialogue with other young scholars, she also had the opportunity to hear from respected public figures and activists. She talked face-to-face with gender equality advocate Halima Aden, who was the first hijab-wearing model on the covers of Vogue Arabia and British Vogue.
She also listened to a speech from Meghan Markle about her experience in the royal family and how she came to be a leader for women’s rights. Busheska had the chance to speak with these stars one-on-one and realized an important aspect of the summit.
“The whole point of the summit is that no one is a ‘star’ and we are all working together to make a better world,” she said.
In addition to the speeches, Busheska also became involved in breakout sessions with delegates where they discussed different topics and tried to come up with solutions. In some rooms, groups were presented with a problem or task and had 40 minutes to come up with an answer.
A big point of conversation throughout these sessions was about the power of machine learning and technology for making change.
“The summit really focused on how we can use technology for the social good,” she said.
As an electrical engineering and computer science double major, Busheska is looking forward to implementing this new knowledge of technology into her studies and beyond.
“I’ll make sure that, as much as possible, I’ll be able to use all the skills that I gain from my classes to make a positive difference in the world,” she said.
During the summit, Busheska was able to represent her country in a short film that will be released next year.
“I was happy to represent my country … because I come from a very small country, we are often underrepresented in these places. So I’m glad that they had the chance to represent North Macedonia as well,” Busheska said.
Though she was hesitant at first to apply for the summit because she would have to miss classes, Busheska is overall very grateful for the opportunity to attend. Not only did she gain insight from people across the globe, but she learned that there is no age limit to fighting for a brighter future.
“One of the most important parts of the summit really focused on [the fact] that nobody is too young to make a difference,” Busheska said.
