One student, in particular, has already made a remarkable journey from limited education opportunities in Afghanistan to becoming, now, one of Australia's highest achievers.
Twenty year-old Wahida Samim is mature beyond her years.
She was born in Afghanistan, but life there for her Hazara family was difficult.
The minority group is persecuted and often pushed to live in remote parts of Afghanistan where, she says, there are fewer education opportunities.
"A lot of us were either forced to become slaves or servants or pushed to very remote central Afghanistan, where it's very harsh terrain. So, from my memory and even now, a lot of Hazaras are not educated because of the fact they've been so isolated and they've been, I guess, so discriminated against."
Wahida Samim's father was forced to flee to find a better life for his family.
He arrived in Australia by boat years later and spent seven months in detention before being granted a temporary visa.
It took years more for the Samim family to be reunited.
"I didn't recognise my dad at all. I had seen pictures of him, I had heard stories of him. People were always talking about how he would do this and he would do that. They would say that, 'You look exactly like your dad.' But I'm, like, 'I don't really know my dad. I have no idea what he looks like.'"
Wahida Samim was just eight years old when she arrived in Australia.
Even though she did not speak English initially, she excelled at school and went on to university.
"Coming to university is kind of a big achievement, because my mum never went to school and my dad couldn't finish his degree. So me being able to get the scholarship to go and study overseas is really, really big, and I'm really privileged and really lucky."
Ms Samim is one of around a hundred students chosen for next year's New Colombo Plan intake.
The government-funded scholarship program will allow her to spend six months in Hong Kong during the final year of her commerce degree.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says it is about building Australia's engagement in the Indo-Pacific region.
"It's about making young Australians more Asia-literate, more aware of our place in the world. And they'll come back after their experience with new perceptions and new perspectives and new ideas and insights and, hopefully, language skills and connections and relationships that will, no doubt, last a lifetime."
Under the original Colombo Plan, thousands of Asian students studied in Australia in the 1950s, including the father of opposition foreign-affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong.
She remembers it as a huge opportunity.
"Well, it was life-changing for Dad. It gave him the opportunity to get a tertiary education. He was the first person in his family to finish school, let alone a person able to go to a university, so it was life-changing for him and, ultimately, for our family. I wouldn't be here but for the Colombo Plan, because, of course, Dad met Mum at university, at the University of Adelaide, and they were married and went back to Malaysia, where I was born and then my younger brother. So my parents only met because of the Colombo Plan scholarship."
The New Colombo Plan is now a gateway for Australian students to study in 40 different countries in the Indo-Pacific.
Julie Bishop says it has rapidly expanded in recent years to include internships with business giants like PWC and Deloitte.
"We're partnering with businesses and *NGOs and even other governments to give our New Colombo Plan students an opportunity to actually work in their workplaces in another country. That's an extraordinary experience for people. The future of our country is in good hands if the New Colombo Plan scholars are any mark of that."
But the program does not have bipartisan support in Canberra.
Labor proposed a cut to funding at the last election.
Penny Wong says she agrees exposing Australians to the Indo-Pacific is highly valuable, though, and says Labor will re-evaluate its position in the lead-up to the next election.
"Well, look, obviously we've only just had an election. We'll be looking at our policies in the lead-up to the next election, and we'll make those announcements in due course. But what I would say is this: engagement with our region is important, increasing the capability of the Australian workforce, in terms of knowledge of the region, better language understanding, these are all important economic and social priorities."
