Our Australian story begins in 2010, I am Karina Ojeda and my home town is Barranquilla, Colombia.

I made the decision to start a new life outside of my Country Colombia, with the only objective to follow my dreams, focused on achieving improvement and changes in the social development of my country. I arrived in Brisbane where I studied English and a Master of Project Management at the University of Queensland. This journey opened my eyes to a more broad idea of social development, and I understood that it is far more important to enjoy the present moment instead of thinking constantly in the destination.

The first challenge was the language and being able to engage with the Australian culture, which differs from the Colombian culture in different aspects. However I found myself enjoying all of those awesome environments and experiences that Australia has. And I had the opportunity to immerse myself into the Australian culture by working in different restaurants as a waitress and in a QUT university as a cleaner.

Definitely, those jobs made me grow as a human being and opened the doors to reach my main goals, the English as a second language and the master degree.

Before finishing my master, I got married in Colombia and my husband came to Australia, we started a journey that can only be described as a rollercoaster of life. Brisbane, even though is a great city gave us a few hardships on the job hunting, especially for my husband. It is in this time where Melbourne takes a remarkable role in our lives.

Two months ago we moved to this fantastic city where I got a place to start an internship in an awesome organisation called ‘Engineer Without Borders’ (EWB), and my husband soon became a volunteer in the same organisation. Taking into account our engineering background, EWB gave us a way to achieve a social impact as humanitarian engineers and a pathway to apply our skills to fulfil our social development dream.

Definitely, we found Melbourne to be a great cosmopolitan city, with open arms to locals and foreign. Here, we have discovered wonderful opportunities in short time, my husband already got a job and that allow us to continue pursuing our wishes and opening our minds to build social change ideas.

Finally, one of our main goals is to create a stargate between The Colombian culture and Australian culture with the unique purpose to show the beautiful face of our culture in this beautiful city.