Even before she began her Bond University degree, Katura Halleday was changing lives across Africa, helping girls stay in school and pursue higher education through her not-for-profit 8x8 To Educate.
Now the 20-year-old Bachelor of Entrepreneurial Transformation and Global Studies student has been named a finalist for Queensland’s Young Australian of the Year.
Katura was still a teen when she started her not-for-profit organisation 8x8 To Educate.
The organisation resells artwork created by the community, to the community to help put girls through high school and university in Mozambique and Tanzania.
Her passion for helping people was sparked when, at the age of 13, she went to Africa to make a documentary about a school in Beira, Mozambique.
Encouraged by her parents to appreciate her "privileged" upbringing in Australia, the visit was "life-changing".
“It made me realise we could do without so much here in Australia.
“There’s something about poverty that questions your place in the world.
“It shaped my world and now I work hard to help provide those kids with education and reusable sanitary products.”
The initial program for a small group of girls through www.8x8toeducate.com has now grown into a scholarship program and expanded into Tanzania where she educates girls from secondary school to university.
Katura has taken her message to the United Nations in New York and is convinced that “if we all actively do something we can achieve educational equality”.
“I’m a big believer that we should raise money, be there to support them, and then let them spend it best in their own communities.”
In order to attend the ceremony in Brisbane on November 12 with her fellow finalists, Katura will be jetting in from her latest international adventure studying in South Korea as a New Colombo Plan scholar.
She was among 219 Australian undergraduate students from 33 universities across Australia offered NCP scholarships supporting them to undertake international study, language training and internships.