Jack Collard is a proud Whadjuk-Ballardong Nyoongar man from Boorloo. He was supported by a MADALAH secondary scholarship to attend Wesley College, where he graduated in 2017.
In 2018, Jack was awarded a MADALAH tertiary scholarship to continue his studies at the University of Western Australia. Jack enrolled into a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Political Sciences and International Relations & Indonesian Studies.
During his studies in 2018, Jack had the opportunity to intern for Professor Megan Davis (Professor of Law and PVC Indigenous UNSW) at the United Nations Expert Mechanisms on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNEMRIP) in Geneva. He hopes to be more involved in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) in the future so that he can continue to learn from First Nations people from around the world.
In 2019, Jack started a New Colombo Plan Scholarship Program studying and interning abroad in the Indo-Pacific region. He studied at the Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta and after that, interned at various NGOs in places like Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Japan and Timor Leste.
“I’m very grateful for the many opportunities that MADALAH made possible for me throughout high school and now into my university studies. The scholarship has allowed me to pursue amazing opportunities like attending UNEMRIP and UNPFII, and has opened up doors I would have never known about”.
In the future, Jack plans to do a PhD on how First Nations people across the globe have mitigated certain issues associated with their pursuits for economic self-determination.
