[D9640general] [eFlash_Rotary] Digest Number 1022

[Garry & Anne Krischock]

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1. 1889 : Rotary shapes the future of an Ambassadorial Scholar From: Sunil 


Posted by: "Sunil"
<mailto:sunilkzach at yahoo.co.uk?Subject=%20Re%3A1889%20%3A%20Rotary%20shapes%
20the%20future%20of%20an%20Ambassadorial%20Scholar> sunilkzach at yahoo.co.uk
<http://profiles.yahoo.com/sunilkzach> sunilkzach 


Tue Jun 1, 2010 6:37 pm (PDT) 


At 28, Chesa Boudin has lived a rich and adventurous life. He's hitchhiked
through Latin America, trekked across Asia, landed a Rhodes Scholarship,
worked unpaid in the foreign relations office of Venezuelan President Hugo
Chávez, and authored Gringo: A Coming-of-Age in Latin America.

Now a student at Yale Law School, his childhood was marked by tragedy and
privilege. His parents, David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, were members of the
radical group the Weather Underground. In 1981, when Boudin was 14 months
old, his parents attempted to rob a Brinks truck, and two police officers
and a security guard died during the incident. When his parents went to
prison, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn stepped in and raised him. They
lived in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, the enclave around the University
of Chicago campus, where Boudin attended a university lab school.

Over the years, Boudin has taken a lot of heat for his parents' behavior.
His accomplishments are often a counterpoint to his unconventional
childhood. But whatever it is that fuels his ambitions, one thing is clear:
It was a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholarship that launched him into
the world. 

"Rotary profoundly shaped the future of my life," he says. "The scholarship
exposed me to a huge part of the world that I hadn't experienced. I became
fluent in Spanish, and the service component gave me an appreciation for
getting involved in people's lives."

Boudin knew when he was a freshman at Yale that he wanted to spend his
junior year abroad. After consulting with the university's study abroad
office, he decided the flexibility and generosity of the Ambassadorial
Scholarships program offered the best opportunity.

"I put all my eggs in one basket," he says. "Rotary was generous enough to
make a full year of immersion possible, and because Rotary is all over the
world, I could go anywhere."

Most Ambassadorial Scholarship recipients have already completed their
undergraduate degree and use the opportunity to do graduate work abroad, so
Boudin had an uphill battle. He researched Rotary clubs in Chicago and New
Haven and eventually was sponsored by the Rotary Club of Woodbridge, Conn.,
after receiving guidance and support from the Rotary clubs of Hamden and New
Haven. 

"I was in school in New Haven and was able to find a club that was open to
my application," he recalls. "They called me in for an interview, and it
went really well." 

Having traveled a bit in Guatemala before heading off to college, Boudin
knew he wanted to go somewhere in Latin America. He felt it was important to
choose a country that was stable and had a good university system because he
would spend an entire academic year there. In the end, he decided to study
in Chile. He learned that he had won the scholarship right before his
sophomore year, which he used to prepare for his trip by taking Spanish
classes and courses on Latin American history.

His decision was filled with opportunities. Because South America's academic
year is opposite to that of the United States, Boudin was able to spend a
few months traveling before he started school, armed with enough Spanish to
pick up subtleties and communicate. The trip became the background for
Gringo, which was published last year. "My book wouldn't have been possible
without Rotary and the experiences I had because of their support," he says.

He wasn't quite fluent in Spanish, but the scholarship paid for him to take
immersion classes in Santiago. "The importance of language acquisition is
something that Rotary puts a lot of emphasis on, and rightly so," Boudin
says. "They call it an Ambassadorial Scholarship because there is a sense
that you're going to represent your home district, and language is an
important part of that process."

He was in Chile when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York
City on 11 September 2001, and it deeply colored his experience. With family
and friends in New York, Boudin watched events unfold from the other side of
the world. Although his Chilean friends were concerned for him, they also
couldn't help point out the significance the date played in their own
history - and the U.S. role in it. In Chile, 11 September is also a tragic
day. On that date in 1973, General Augusto Pinochet's military overthrew
democratically elected president Salvador Allende, which began a dark period
in Chilean history that cost thousands of lives.

"It was never directed at me in a hostile way, but it did force me to come
to terms very early on with the impact of U.S. involvement in Chile," he
says. "I had friends who were injured or had family members who died on 11
September, but I also met people in Chile who had relatives who suffered
under Pinochet, and it made the tragedy of his regime clear in a really
stark way."

When Boudin returned from his year abroad, he shared his experiences with
Rotary clubs throughout New England. He also applied for - and received - a
Rhodes Scholarship. Although many see the Rhodes as the pinnacle of academic
achievement, Boudin says it couldn't have happened without Rotary.

"The Ambassadorial Scholarship was a necessary building block for the
Rhodes, which is better known but in many ways more limited than Rotary's
because it only sends you to Oxford," he says. 

Years later, Boudin still keeps in touch with his Rotarian sponsors and
remains committed to the organization. "The Rotary community has been very
supportive and very interested in what I'm doing. They gave me their stamp
of approval, and I think they want to see what I've done with it."

Source : The Rotarian - May 2010 / Courtesy : eFlash_Rotary

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