Shay Zavaro

Shay Zavaro is a 27 year old student at London City University and a member of the Olive Tree program. He is from Tel Aviv originally and is doing postgraduate studies in International Politics. He is the eldest of a family of 5 and he describes his growing up in two parts-the good and the bad. Shay was dyslexic and overweight as a kid and when he got to his final year of high school, was determined to turn all that around and lost weight, and achieved the results in study that saw him accepted into one of the top units of the Israeli Defense Force. Shay learned that “challenges are essential to our development.” He has spent time working with refugees from Darfur who have streamed into Tel Aviv and loves working with young people, and he represented Israel in the national Rugby Team. He witnessed some of the terror attacks when he first joined the Israeli Army, but came to see the Palestinian community in a human light. He is proud that during his 4 years of service, and he maintained a costly discipline to ensure his team treated the Palestinians with respect. He has visited other places that are recovering from conflict such as Croatia and Northern Ireland, and says he learned a lot there. Shay says “I truly believe I can bring a new story… because I see myself as a story of change…. and I am only (at) the beginning.”