Gavin Sullivan has traveled a long way since the summer of 1994 when he served as a day camp leader for the city of Mountlake Terrace.
What the 1996 Shorecrest High School graduate has apparently always packed with him is a commitment to helping others and the less fortunate.
Sullivan spoke Tuesday to Shoreline Rotary members about his latest experiences in Buenos Aires as a Rotary World Peace Scholar at the Jesuit school, Universidad del Salvador.
“The peace scholarship focus is conflict resolution, which is great,” Sullivan told the group. “In the world we’re living in now, that is especially important.”
Before getting to Argentina, Sullivan piled up an impressive string of experiences, along with bachelor’s degrees in international studies and political science from the University of Washington.
A year after high school graduation, Sullivan worked for the Commemorator, a nationally distributed newspaper published from Oakland, Calif., that advances the principles of the original Black Panther Party.
Six months later, it was a stint in Ecuador with a United Nations development program which was quickly followed by three months with a youth program in Harlem, NY. The following summer included working and living in an Israeli Kibbutz.
Sullivan then interned for U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Bainbridge, in Washington, D.C., assisting on a “Voices Against Violence” congressional teen conference.
In 2000, Sullivan worked at Seattle YMCA’s East Madison branch and since 2002, has been a case manager for the Y’s transitions program for young adults coming out of state foster care.
Sullivan also won a spot in the U.S. Fulbright program, spending a year of studying the effects of U.S. military intervention and assistance in Colombia. As an outgrowth of that, Sullivan also runs his own import company of fair-trade products from Medellin, Colombia.
“I had actually qualified for a Rotary scholarship before but then the Fulbright program came along and I had to turn it (the Rotary scholarship) down,” Sullivan said.
“My focus is global economic policy and free-trade agreements,” Sullivan said. “Argentina had a huge financial crisis in 2002, so being there now is very important.”
Sullivan told the Rotarians that a key concern for him is the use and allocation of natural resources around the world.
As an illustration, he did an exercise using a bed sheet on the floor to represent the world’s natural resources a century ago and had one person stand on the sheet to represent the world population at the time. At the end of the exercise, the sheet had been folded to about an eighth the size with 12 people, elbow to elbow, standing on it.
Sullivan said he believes the logging of the Amazon rain forest is the most critical natural resources issue facing the world.
“We don’t know the wealth of biodiversity that is there,” he said. “(The Amazon) is the lungs of the earth.”
Sullivan’s Rotary program runs through 2006 and will offer a master’s degree at completion.
The program is run by the Rotary Foundation, which partners with universities around the world to establish the Rotary Centers for International Studies in peace and conflict resolution.
Each year, Rotary selects up to 70 fellows to study at one of the seven Rotary Centers worldwide. The selected Rotary World Peace Fellows begin two-year master’s-level degree programs in conflict resolution, peace studies, and international relations.
Each Rotary district may nominate one candidate for the selection process. Sullivan is in the program’s third-ever class and the first to be accepted from Rotary District 5030, which includes the Shoreline club.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
