Meet Uaeisa

"Right now, the only limitation in our life is just our hard work, rather than our status."

That's Uaeisa, one of the first students to arrive in Australia through the Refugee Student Settlement Pathway. She's studying a Bachelor of Biomedical Science at Deakin University in Geelong, and in this short film by independent filmmaker Ahmad Ebrahimi, she tells her story in her own words.

Uaeisa fled Myanmar with her family in 2013, when she was nine. For the next decade she lived as a refugee in Malaysia, where her love of science kept finding a way through. Through scholarships she made her way through school, earning top marks in Biology, Chemistry and Physics, all while working part time to help her family get by. But as a refugee she couldn't access an affordable, recognised university education in Malaysia. The results were there. The pathway wasn't.

Education has always been the family's north star. Her mum told her it was the key to success, and both her parents sacrificed enormously so she could keep studying. Now Uaeisa is thinking about where biomedical science can take her: healthcare, research, biotech, maybe postgraduate medicine, with a particular interest in serving rural Australia.

And in a detail we couldn't have scripted, the day she landed in Australia was her birthday. "It's the biggest gift, the best present I've ever received in my entire life."

An additional 75 students like Uaeisa have been selected to arrive through the RSSP in 2027.

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