MASSARO: Change, one campus at a time

By Gary Massaro, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Saul Garlick, right, hosts a community health day on HIV-AIDS at Mahlathi Primary School in Mpumulanga, South Africa. In 2001, as an East High School senior, Garlick founded the nonprofit Student Movement for Real Change, which now has chapters on 25 college campuses.

If you knew him back when, you'd have figured Saul Garlick would go places.

He has. And is.

In fact, he's almost always on the go.

Garlick, 24, spends a lot of time in airports and on planes, traveling across the country to promote Student Movement for Real Change, the organization he started his senior year at East High School.

He's back in Denver this week to accept the Circles of Change award from Denver-based Seeking Common Ground. Its main program is Building Bridges for Peace, that brings together American, Israeli and Palestinian women to participate in a leadership-peace program.

While at East in 2001, Garlick and some friends were talking about what they could do to make a difference. That fall, the United States had been attacked by terrorists. As President Bush was sending troops to Afghanistan, he asked Americans to help the people of that country.

So Garlick spearheaded Student Movement for Real Change. He has stuck with it. And the nonprofit now has chapters on 25 college campuses.

"It was started as a way of mobilizing students right after Sept. 11 for student unity," he said.

The first project was strictly local, collecting $500 from East students to send to needy children in Afghanistan.

In February 2002, he took a trip.

"I went to South Africa, where my family's originally from," he said. "I went to a rural area - Mpumalanga - and saw a school. They had laid four rows of bricks."

The rest had been set aside - lack of money to finish.

"That's when the development focus of the organization began," Garlick said.

He enrolled students at Johns Hopkins University to raise money to return to South Africa to finish the classroom.

"I started recruiting friends to start chapters themselves," Garlick said. "They started raising funds for the same project. We were all focused on this school in South Africa."

Students returned the following summer and finished the classroom.

Garlick's vision grew, as did the organization - "to engage young people on issues in neglected regions of the world and empower them to make changes directly."

"And that became our mission, to give students a voice and resources to raise funds," he said.

Lilly Muldoon, who started a chapter at Pomona College, told Garlick about a water project she wanted to do in Kenya.

"That was our second project," Garlick said.

He graduated from Johns Hopkins with a bachelor's degree in 2006, followed in 2007 with a master's degree in American foreign policy and international economics.

He didn't know it, but he found his career back in high school.

"It's my full-time job," he said.

For information, log on to studentmovementusa.org.