The horror of witnessing a child begging for food in Laos turned Nina Sackprasith into a social entrepreneur. Now, The University of Queensland (UQ) graduate supports girls in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, to get an education.
Nina has used her parents’ experience as refugees, and a Graduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, to take action against poverty. Her mother, Phouvone Sackprasith, was 17 years old when she escaped Laos in the 1980s to live in a detention camp in Thailand for a year with her younger sister, before getting sponsored to move to Australia. To reach this camp, they escaped in a small boat at night to avoid being shot by soldiers who would have killed them for fleeing because they didn’t want “people against communism” getting out.
