In conversation with Chandra Christmas-Rouse (Fellows DC ‘11)
Chandra Christmas-Rouse is an urban planner, civic designer, systems changemaker, and LearnServe alumna (Fellows DC, 2011). Chandra’s professional background lies in environmental justice, community development, and affordable housing policy work. We had the privilege of learning about her career and LearnServe journey over a conversation:
Could you give us an overview of your current work in the social impact space?
Over the past few years, I’ve been working at the intersection of planning, policy, and art. A big part of my policy focus has been helping Chicago region leaders to better implement social change efforts. After a new policy is enacted, I help leaders understand what actual work is needed to shift culture and to move in alignment with the policy. How do we shift material conditions of communities where we serve in the predominantly Black south and west sides of the city?
I look at how we bring more investment into transit in these areas. I ask, how can we have a community-led vision for the development of the city?
I also have my own creative projects, namely, the Maplibs Project which maps the greater Bronzeville neighborhoods. I have facilitated a number of meetings to inspire dialogue about what a shared vision for a neighborhood looks like. I asked, how do we best preserve stories of the past so we can imagine a future that is inclusive?
Caption: The Maplibs Project is “a living atlas of the spaces that make us feel, remember and imagine community in greater Bronzeville neighborhoods.” This participatory mapping project invites users to submit sounds, photos, and videos to explore memory making and imagining of the Bronzeville neighborhoods.
Could you walk us through your LearnServe journey?
My experience at LearnServe helped ignite an entrepreneurial spirit. It trained me in trusting my own imagination. A lot of my work now is about helping communities trust their own vision — bringing more imagination and repair to a lot of the community-building work.
LearnServe has also helped me build a language for what I was seeing in my community. At the time, that was investment in the Washington D.C. area. My Fellows project was called Ready, Set, Go Green. I wanted to support schools in the DC area to build community gardens and then activate those gardens and curriculums to inspire students to be environmental stewards – to have a relationship with the natural environment. My venture tried to support teachers using gardens as a teaching tool. The venture was first inspired by my experience with a local school and noticing its garden space was underutilized. I saw a need to bring more environmental education to young people.
My experience with LearnServe has shaped my vision for what’s possible and led me to encourage young people’s voice and leadership.
After LearnServe, I eventually went to grad school at Harvard. During this time, I took a course on entrepreneurship and the environment at MIT. I also then applied for a start-up incubator called designX.
My business partner and I created a start-up called Roux. Our mission was moving at the intersection of community, commerce, and culture. We wanted to design a platform that engaged local minority-owned businesses and connected them to tourists visiting the cities. It was almost like a blend between Yelp and AirBnB experiences. We wanted to provide curated experiences and encourage visitors to patronize these businesses more.
Since then, my partner and I have pivoted to more direct consulting. However, we still use the same value proposition and vision that these businesses matter. We want to develop economic development strategies that uplift minority-owned businesses as not just businesses, but cultural organizers and gathering spaces.
We have had a couple of students interested in initiatives addressing gentrification or affordable housing. For those wishing to work in housing policy in the future, what advice would you give them?
So much of housing is about your own personal narrative and your own understanding of home and community. I would encourage students to reflect on what their definition of home is and what they want to see in their own community. They should anchor their work in their personal values.
I would ask them, “Who shaped your understanding of home? Who inspired it?” This kind of work is challenging, so it’s important to be anchored in your own personal narrative.
Next, I would also say that as much as we are pushed into single issue expertise areas, I would encourage folks to see they don’t live single-issue lives. They are also a resident, a commuter, a worker, a community member.
So, how do we design spaces that facilitate a more holistic understanding on how we navigate cities? How do we use cities? How do we create housing that is near to transit? How can we ensure access to green spaces so our health needs are being met? I would encourage students to think about how they design for housing and other amenities like those.
Lastly, so much of housing is tied to other local and state policies. Go to community meetings, school board meetings, zoning meetings – any public meeting to listen to how housing issues are connected to other issues. By getting involved in these spaces, they can understand a broad group of folks and have that network.
Do you think students currently designing ventures in our Fellows program face a more complex world than you did back in 2011?
Certainly. This moment that we are in, in terms of information and technology, has shifted a lot since I was in the program. A big part of the research I did to investigate injustice was a matter of finding the right information and data.
Now, we have access to so much information. Now, it’s about curating perspectives because it’s easy to create an information bubble. It’s important to curate a diverse set of data and information.
I’d really encourage folks to think about coalitions that they can be part of that include voices that are different from their own. Connect with groups that are organizing on the ground. Build coalitions and networks – whether that is multiracial, cross-class, or interfaith. Being able to have perspectives different from your own will enrich how you will engage in the LearnServe experience.
Due to underinvestment and decreased funding, there are increasingly fewer spaces where we are around folks different from us. My experience going to public libraries or taking public transportation has allowed me to engage with different communities.
Our faith in a lot of public institutions have decreased. I would like folks to value civic institutions as spaces that make us more empathetic and connected, just more human. I’d encourage folks to be in more physical public spaces.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our community?
My experience in LearnServe inspired me to continue finding a community committed to social entrepreneurship. I’m very grateful LearnServe gave me the confidence and passion to pursue those opportunities. It’s important for students to feel validated and for their reality of climate injustice to be acknowledged.