“I was lucky enough to go on an exchange for a year at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, with support from the Dominion Post Global Citizen’s Scholarship. The vibrancy of Madrid, coupled with the amazing people I met, made this year without a doubt the best of my life to date.”

Genna was initially a little unsure of what course of study to pursue at university, but in retrospect, her three years at university were “fantastic!”. Her first year was spent studying a number of subjects across different faculties to gain an appreciation of what was on offer and enable her to decide what she wanted to pursue.

“I was drawn to Geography and Development Studies because of their relevance to creating a sustainable world. I am now pursuing a career through which I hope to develop innovative solutions to address the challenges the world is facing.”

“Wellington is a beautiful city and I love living here. Victoria University of Wellington is a fabulous university with a range of great courses and a very high calibre of teaching. The stand out for me during my time at university was the extra opportunities students have, such as overseas exchanges and WILP.”

“A lot of my course work allows me to choose the subjects that I research, so I have been able to spend a lot of time looking at women’s rights in different ways. Recently I had the opportunity to attend the Women Deliver Global Conference 2016 in Denmark. The conference gives women from across the globe the opportunity to meet and discuss the health, rights and wellbeing of all girls and women. Attending it allowed me to put what I’ve been learning at university into a practical setting.”

“The University offers students the chance to discuss and inform themselves on international development, poverty, human rights and environmental issues with the Victoria International Development Society. As a member, I am able to share the knowledge I’ve gained from my experiences such as the Women Deliver Global Conference, as well as learn from other students.”

Stella has already spent time overseas experiencing development first hand, volunteering in Tanzania for four months teaching English.

This year, she’ll volunteer in Mexico at a micro financing company designed to help women start their own businesses before spending two semesters studying Development Studies in England at the University of East Anglia through Wellington Global Exchange.

In a previous life I worked as a secondary school teacher. I went into development, working with the New Zealand High Commission in Apia, Samoa, and then Volunteer Service Abroad (VSA).

After a while I realised that I needed to couple my practical experience with some theoretical knowledge and I decided to do the Postgraduate Diploma in Development Studies. I loved it so much I continued on to do a Master of Development Studies—and now I'm working on my PhD full time.

On completing my postgraduate diploma I was promoted to the position of Programme Officer in VSA's Pacific team, where I managed the VSA programmes in Samoa, Tonga and Tokelau as well as Kiribati in Micronesia.

I work a lot in the Pacific Island region, and I have noticed that it's the very basic things that affect people’s daily welfare. How is development changing people’s lives for the better or worse? How can people in the Pacific region, or elsewhere, participate in the decisions that are changing their lives?

A big part of it is not just imposing answers from outside, but, through community involvement and consultation, finding ways of harnessing people's own ideas, their own resources and their own visions of the future—and then working with that.

I’ve being doing this for more than 30 odd years now, mostly doing research and working with development agencies. I started with an interest in Africa, and I did my PhD work in Kenya way back. I remember my first day in Nairobi—walking around and getting blown away by the place and the people. But I was also blown away by the enormity of the issues and the incredible rate and nature of change that was happening.

Today, so much is happening in the world, so much is fundamentally changing people’s lives—for better or worse. So for me I want to be involved in these issues and try to understand them a little more.

Students studying development will be mixing with people interested in the big wide world, many of whom have been travelling and doing the backpacking thing—going through South America, South East Asia and the Pacific. They're coming back thinking, "This is where I want to work, I want to be involved, to get dirty boots and be hands on." It's very inspiring.