Sophie Palavestra

Sophie Palavestra was a student in Year 12 at Narrabundah College, ACT in 2005, when she spoke at the AEF National Forum Engaging Young Australians with Asia. To that point she had studied Japanese language and culture since kindergarten and has participated in many Japanese speech contests. In addition, Sophie had represented her school in numerous public speaking forums. She has been an active member of the Scouts and as such, Sophie lead a group of 35 youths to the Solomon Islands in July 2004 to perform urgent repairs on a Red Cross school.