Throwback Wednesday: Quinten Kwadijk

I am Quinten Kwadijk, 20 years old, I have lived in Enschede all my life. I have been a member of DWARS and Groenlinks since February 2019, when I really became politically active.

When I was young, I was already very concerned about the climate and the state the world was going to. Forests/amazons being cut down and animal species going extinct was already very much in my mind. I even had a WWF membership back then at the age of 10.

I only became interested again since October 2018. My sister had been vegan for a long time, and she always came up with good arguments to cut down on meat. I always thought it was important to listen to certain points of view, and always found discussions fun/interesting. Not long after that, I became a vegetarian and started looking into climate positives, and eventually that was the starting point of my interest in climate, and solutions.

In late January, I saw that several climate marches were coming up and the provincial government was being elected. I wanted to be a part of that myself, so I joined DWARS. A place where I could discuss and talk about problematic issues in politics. I ended up doing a lot of campaigning and went to my first climate march in Amsterdam, where up to 30,000 people turned up in the pouring rain and protested for climate improvements from politics

After that, I became very active within DWARS. I joined an economics committee, for which I go to Utrecht 1 day a week to talk and discuss economic points of politics with certain ideas.

At the second election in May for the European Parliament, I came more into contact with Groenlinks Enschede. I wanted to be actively involved from the start, so I was asked to join Groenlinks Enschede's campaign team. Here, together with Groenlinks Enschede, I thought about Enschede's campaign and how we were going to tackle it, and how DWARS could help. In the process, I also participated in campaigning outside Enschede. At the liberation festival in Zwolle, I also helped and met MEP Bas Eickhout, who was number 1 on the list. I really look up to people like that, and I hope to do something in politics myself later on.

Thanks to DWARS, I also met my girlfriend. She is chairman of the Young Socialists, which makes for lots of fun discussions and good cooperation between the JS and DWARS in Overijssel. Always useful?

Meanwhile, I have now applied to DWARS Overijssel to join the board as chairman. I think it would be really cool to be able to change something about politics myself, and to gain board experience. In addition, if all goes well, I will start a HBO Bestuurskunde course in Deventer, where the course deals a lot with local politics and climate, so that would fit in very nicely. I myself also hope to join the municipal council later on and help people within the municipality!