When Rebecca Crisp finished high school at Kinross Wolaroi, instead of heading straight to the Gold Coast or some other party capital like other recent school-leavers, she went to Nepal.
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It was more than a year since the South Asian country had been devastated by the 2015 earthquake which killed nearly 9,000 and left close to 3.5 million people homeless, but the impact was still reverberating.
Help was badly needed on the ground and along with 13 other high school students from Orange, Ms Crisp gave up "schoolies" to assist with the rebuilding effort in a program put together by Rotary.
The experience ignited a love for combining travel with volunteering and the 21-year-old has now embarked on quite a few excursions like it, many of them solo. Some of these have included working with the International Legal Foundation in Myanmar and travelling to Cambodia with Law Reform and Social Justice.
"The (Nepal) program was really great because it essentially makes you so much more confident in the ability you have to make tangible change," Ms Crisp said of that first project that kick-started her aid work.
"I never envisioned that I'd be able to travel to a place like South East Asia and do anything except take photos and drink cocktails (before Nepal).
"But it makes you realise that there are so many opportunities to do so much more than that and now I travel independently in South East Asia quite a lot."
Now the university student's years of humanitarian work have been recognised by being selected as one of 24 finalists in NSW's Inspirational Women's Awards in the Young Rural Woman category.
Ms Crisp, who is currently studying law, politics, philosophy and economics at the Australian National University, said she was "very surprised but very honoured" to be a finalist.
The 21-year-old was nominated by Mary Brell from Rotary Club of Orange Daybreak, whom she travelled to Nepal with in late 2016.
"I've gotten to do so many cool things because (of the 2016 Rotary trip to Nepal) and I never would have had the opportunity if it wasn't for Mary (Brell) and the team at Rotary," Ms Crisp said.
The Awards which seek to "shine a light upon the enormous contribution of women in both urban and rural communities" will take place virtually on November 15.
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