Hannah Bonham Blackwell | How a Florist is Transforming Lives in Inner City Chicago

Transcript

Srini Rao:

Hannah, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Yep, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Srini Rao:

Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here. So I found out about the work that you do by way of somebody who wrote in for your team that talked to me about the work that you're doing in South side of Chicago. And I thought, yeah, this is definitely a story worth telling. But before we get into all of that, I wanted to start by asking you what social group are you a part of in high school and what impact did that end up having on what you've ended up doing with your life?

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Yeah, so that's a very interesting question. I can't tell you anybody has asked me that before. So it's kind of fun being asked questions that you haven't been able to talk about before. But I would say that my social group in high school really started in seventh grade. So in seventh grade, we came back from living four years in South America. So I came back to the same house, same community that I had grown up in, that my mom had basically grown up in. I was...

around all the way to fourth cousins. So generations of farming families came back to the same community. But I was totally different and I didn't fit in anymore. I didn't understand what was cool, what was uncool. I didn't understand, you know, just the basics of like wearing something with a brand name was cool. And, you know, all of those weird things that we get caught up in in middle school. So.

It really forced me to befriend lots of different people and to really have to create my own little world, which I think a lot of us have to do in middle school. But I really was, I was really not trying to be cool because I just didn't know how. So it really forced me to befriend everybody, which made eighth grade completely different. I was elected into our little student council.

All of a sudden I was being invited to cool kids birthday parties, but it didn't change the fact that I had still hung out with and befriended kind of everybody. And that led into high school. So once high school hit, because of how middle school was, I kind of was everybody's friend. I knew a lot of different people in a lot of different groups. I was very involved in a lot of different activities, which put me in different groups. And...

As it ended up, once I hit senior year, I was elected student body president, I was homecoming queen, I was swim team captain, but all of that, I wasn't really in the cool crowd, like I wasn't a cheerleader or I wasn't necessarily great at swimming, I just was the team captain because I feel like people really trusted me and they...

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

felt like there was some sincerity, hopefully, about me. And I just knew a lot of different people, and I cared about a lot of different people. And I feel like it really taught me about servant leadership, how, you know, I'm a Christian, and the Bible talks about if you want to be the greatest, you need to be the least. And, you know, the leader needs to be the servant. And I really experienced that in a very real way, even as early as high school. And I feel like it did...

set me up to be a different kind of leader now in my in my adult years.

Srini Rao:

Well, tell me about the time in South America and the sort of re -assimilation, because I think that even in my own experience of studying abroad and coming back, the thing that my friend had told me was that the reverse culture shock would be far worse, mainly because like he told me, he said, like when you're in a foreign country, especially during a study abroad or something like that, everything is stimulating, which I'm guessing if you live there, it's probably not the same, but like every like even the most mundane chores, like something that we kind of go through the world with blinders on, like grocery store runs, right?

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Yeah.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Right. Yeah.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Right.

Srini Rao:

in South America grocery store run like is for some reason is just fascinating, stimulating, you're like hyper aware of everything. Whereas I probably couldn't tell you what's in what specific aisle at the grocery store around the corner from my house. And I've been there probably a 200 times.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Right.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. My dad spent time in Central America in college and he said when he came back to the States, he almost cried in the cereal aisle and that was not unique to him. I heard other people talk about specifically the cereal aisle, something about all of those choices and all of that, you know, just the overwhelming nature of kind of the abundance just kind of took, you know, as a wave over him and actually

crazy enough when I was 16, I went back to the same village 25 years later and I was a translator for a church group that went to help rebuild after a hurricane and he had been there 25 years earlier after a hurricane and I got to go to his village and go meet the host mom that he, the family he had lived with which was so amazing. So yeah, so my story in South America actually started with my grandparents. So,

My grandfather put himself through medical school. He was from a poor Mennonite farming family, basically paid for his schooling, shoveling coal to keep the fires going, the furnace going, and got his medical degree. And heard somebody reached out to him that there was a group of Mennonites that spoke his specific dialect, Low German, which was unwritten language at that time. They had...

there was a group in Paraguay that spoke low German that was from kind of the same roots that his family back generations had been from. And they were dying of all sorts of diseases and had no doctor. And he was asked, would he go and be their doctor? So it took three months to get out there by ship, train, and I think ox cart, he said, to get all the way out there. And he came to this village and started,

using his medical degree as much as he could in this group. And he said, he walked into this old woman's home, this grandma's home, after three months of journey, and she gave him an anise cookie that was exactly like the ones that his grandmother used to make. And so he ended up opening a hospital there. He had met my grandmother on a blind date before he left. They wrote for two years, he came back.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

and within a week married her, brought her back. She said he barely let her have any space for clothes because he had all these medical books that he wanted to bring. But he took her back. She was a nurse. She opened a nursing school. And actually several of my cousins have graduated from that nursing school since she opened it in the 40s. So.

My mother comes from a family of eight and so half of her siblings still lived in Paraguay. My grandparents ended up opening, starting a leprosy hospital on the other side of the country to give back to Paraguay because he said, you know, they opened their country up to the Mennonites when nobody else would take them. And so we need to give something back to them. So he opened up the first ever leprosy clinic.

a leprosy hospital that integrated people with leprosy into the village. People were so mad at it, they came with stones and sticks, kind of like a riot almost outside his home. And he said, my grandmother opened the door and welcomed everyone in for pie. And everybody just kind of looked at them and threw their stones down and left. And it ended up being an amazing example.

that you actually could integrate people with leprosy in the village. It did not have to be an outcast community. It could actually be integrated. And as far as he knows, there was only one case that he thinks that somebody got leprosy from the contagious nature. But other than that, he was able to prove that it could be somewhat integrated. And so.

So the foundation of service that my grandparents modeled to my mother, but also to us grandkids was huge. And just growing up with those stories of them just facing unsurmountable odds and because of their faith and their belief that they were put on this earth to serve and to alleviate suffering was huge for me. And so.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

When I was eight, we moved to Paraguay one, because my mom wanted us to get to know that side of the family, five aunts and uncles. In my family, not everyone speaks the same language. My mom grew up speaking four languages and not every, the only people that speak all four is all the siblings. And so we would have to get translators for cousins and uncles and aunts. And it was wild, you know, family reunions, just crazy, crazy time. But.

It was just such an amazing experience. So my parents were nurses and they went to a small village where in my school there were eight languages because of all the indigenous groups. And they were nurses there. My dad trained health promoters, which were kind of like the indigenous people from their villages would come and train in basic nursing skills and would go back to their village. And that was an amazing experience. I mean, we...

as children, right, it's very different than going in as an adult. So you go in as a child and immediately, like we learned the language in three months, it was completely normal and home and everything right away. And so I think because of that, because it became normal so quickly, you know, coming back out of that was just really difficult because, you know, I...

I mean, obviously I had memories of life before, but you know, when you're eight, you're still a child. And when you're 12, you kind of are coming out of that childlike fog and you're starting to figure out who you are and who you want to be and what you believe. And I think that wherever you are during those shifts, so whether it's from child to sort of teen, preteen, or whether it's from kind of teenage to adult, which, you know, I was overseas during that time as well.

I think those are really important times and whatever you're doing at that time or wherever you are, I think it really shapes you. And so I think coming back because I had gone as a child but I came back sort of in this teenage, preteen age, I think that was part of the difficulty. And also just, we had seen pretty desperate poverty. And coming back, we...

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

My dad went back to school to become a pastor and we just didn't have a lot of money. And I had free lunches at school and I felt so guilty that I hated that I was on the free lunches, but that there was this abundance of food in front of me. And I remember, you know, some of the villagers back where we lived, you know, they had one meal a day and it was cooked over a fire in a big cast iron pot. And it was the same thing every day, this rice gizzo that everybody made.

So just that wrestling of really trying to figure out who was I in this new world, but also this whole person I had been and how it shaped how I saw the world now, which was very different.

Srini Rao:

Yeah, wow. I'm curious, what is the education like in an environment like that? Because it's weird, I've just been reading this new book by Nick Romero, an economist called The Alternative, and he writes about somebody whose parents, I think, took him to India, instead of putting him in like, you know, one of the wealthy international schools, they put him in schools with the Indian kids where he actually got to see poverty upfront that, you know, most of us ever don't really get to see.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Yeah, so we were in the village that we were in was kind of a mission outpost that was surrounded by all these indigenous schools. So it was a mix of kind of, you know, German Mennonites that had lived there for several generations, you know, sort of foreigners like us or Canadian families that kind of had roots in Paraguay, but also roots in Canada, and then these different indigenous tribes. So,

It was actually a boarding school for most kids. And because of the boarding school sort of schedule, we just had school like all the time because they just didn't want kids like getting in trouble, I guess getting bored. It was pretty strict. It was a, you know, a pretty strict environment for those kids. And now that I think about it was kind of.

I'm sure a little tough for them. But we would do school kind of like morning to midday. And then everybody would break for lunch and siesta, which was common in Paraguay. And then we go back to school from two to four, and then back to school six to, I think, 7 .30 or eight. So sometimes the evening school we wouldn't do. But as far as the...

the other schooling, you know, that was the schedule. And it was interesting because I feel like there were benefits of kind of their system. For instance, you know, nobody had any books really. We helped to fundraise to get a little library in the school. But there just weren't textbooks. And so we just had to memorize. We would chant, you know, the different...

things that we were memorizing, whether it's like times tables or different, you know, sentences to learn grammar. And, you know, it really, I think the only thing that I am bad at these days, or I think because of that is geography, because when all of my age was learning geography, I was in Paraguay learning their geography, so.

Srini Rao:

Heheheheh

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

I'm pretty bad, you know, my dad always cringes when I'm like, hey, let's play Texas again. I think it's like, you know, Florida or, you know, I've gotten better, but.

Srini Rao:

Well, that's ironic because yeah, you're living abroad. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I think most Americans are geographically ignorant. As an Indian person, when I hear some of the things that people say, I'm like, how the hell do you not know that?

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Yeah.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

I know, right? I know, it's bad. Yeah, I wouldn't mind a little more memorization in our schools. I mean, I think it's, we actually homeschool our kids and I'm definitely doing memorization with them. I'm like, we are memorizing our times tables. We are doing flashcards with them, arithmetic. I mean, my six -year -old son is already learning multiplication and division. So, I just think it's really important.

Srini Rao:

Yeah.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

some of those old school elements that maybe we think we're too good for now. I'm totally for it. I'm for some memorization along with critical thinking, you know, because there's some things that you should just know off the top of your head to build the foundation of everything else on. So, yeah.

Srini Rao:

Yeah. Well, talk to me about how you go from this experience of South America becoming a social chameleon in high school to starting a florist.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Yeah, so that was a that was, you know, quite a few, you know, the the road to something is never straight, right? It's always like it's down and up and around and in circles. And, you know, because I feel like, you know, you're always evolving as a person and the experiences are always, you know, there's that core of who you are. But it's it is looking different with with each stage. Right. So after high school, I did two years in Northern Ireland.

Srini Rao:

Yep.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

My parents always encouraged us, us kids, I have two siblings, and they said, you know, just take a year off after school. Like figure out who you are, do some service, do something else. You know, don't go straight to college. Like figure out what you want to do. Just, just have some experiences before you have debt and meet somebody and whatever else. So all of us did, you know, various, you know, mission trips. And I went to Northern Ireland and I worked at a

an alternative to kind of the nightclubs. So the nightclubs were a real big issue there. There was a lot of kind of people drinking at a young age that was sort of becoming problematic later in life with alcoholism and whatnot. And they realized that part of the issue was there wasn't a lot of places for young people to hang out. It's dreary rather there. So you can't like hang out outside at all. So a couple.

opened this alternative nightclub. It was just like a place for kids to hang out and do all sorts of, you know, like dance and, you know, eat candy and all those fun things. So I went there and they had these trips for youth throughout the summer that you could join. And it was all sorts of service trips around the world. And I was able to lead a team to Spain and I was on a team to Romania, Moldova.

and Scotland and it was just a really cool experience of kind of like I describe it as a positive rebellion where I feel like we all have to kind of rebel in some ways from sort of we have to have that separation from our growing up and our parent but instead of sort of doing it in this negative way of like I'm going to reject everything or I'm going to like do the opposite or I'm just going to go crazy it's like hey I'm going to I'm going to sort of separate myself.

but in these positive ways. And so it was really great. I was there. I kind of had to figure out things on my own a little bit. And that was really good for me. So after that, I did two years at a school close to home that I said I'd never go to, but I was ready to be close to home again. And it was really great. I did a Bible degree. And then,

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

I decided to move to Chicago with my best friend. It was supposed to be for a year for fun. But you know, in high school when I was 15, my dad was a youth pastor and we did a trip to Chicago and it was a really crazy thing because we did this thing where we would vote about where to go and we had all been voting for Denver, like consistently all voted for Denver. And the last day that we had to decide, we all voted for Chicago.

for talking to my friends like, did you vote for Chicago? Yeah, I did. I don't know. I just felt like we should go to Chicago. But the experience was just life changing. And the crazy thing is we were about a mile away from where I live now. I still pass the buildings very frequently that we worked on. We helped redo this community center roof. We did like a little kids club. And we met some.

kids who were our age, teenagers, who were living through crazy experiences. It was the time of the Robert Taylor Project homes. It was right before they started getting torn down when they were at their worst. If you have any time to read about them, I mean, it was terrible. It was just, it was desperate living. And it was so eye -opening because one, I was like, okay, I'd seen poverty overseas, but...

dang, this isn't my own, this isn't America. Like, why is, how is this happening? How is this, how is anybody okay with this? And it was, you know, it was a wake up call to our little sleepy, you know, group from the middle of Kansas to meet these kids that were, you know, one kid ate lunch with us because he had been locked out all night, didn't know where his mom was. Other ones talked about, you know, what they had seen.

I mean, just crazy stuff, right? That no child should be exposed to. But we experienced such strong faith from them, what I had never seen in my peers before. So it was just amazing to see such resilience and meet such deep faith in the midst of.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

you know, such harsh conditions and in teenagers, you know, fellow teenagers. And so I think that experience never really left me. So coming to Chicago, I thought it made sense to me, even though it was supposed to be for fun. And at that point, my parents had moved to Oregon to start like a community, intentional community and a house church. And I was like, oh, I'll probably go out there and do that with them. But, you know, I never left. And...

After getting my Bible degree in Kansas, I went to beauty school because I thought, you know, where's the place where people talk, you know, they don't go to a church to talk, you know, about what's going on in their life, right? They go to their bartender and their hairdresser. So I was like, okay, I'm either going to be a bartender or hairdresser because I really want to be there for people and I want to be connecting with people at a real level and really be able to meet them where they're at. So.

I went to beauty school and I kind of worked at churches and as a hairdresser, at the church I worked at, I took over a homeless breakfast that had been kind of top down and we tried to turn it into more of a beloved community where people could build relationships and because I worked in hair, every holiday I had to work because those were big, you know, usually big for getting your hair done. So I was never home for the holidays and I always opened.

my house up to anybody from our church that would not be going home, including the group of homeless men and women. So we would, I'd make a big meal and I'd have everybody sitting around the house and breaking bread together. And I really was drawn to where are the vulnerable populations around me and how do I uplift them? So the...

The progression then as I lived more and more years in Chicago, I started to do a lot more reading and researching about, okay, why is the city so segregated? I live on the North Side. Why is it predominantly white? Why is the South Side predominantly black? Why is, you know, why are people from the North Side scared to go to the South Side? And you know, there was a moment that everything changed for me and I was sitting on a bus and an older gentleman,

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

an African -American gentleman said to me, you know, I struck up a conversation and he said, oh, where do you live on the North side, right? And I thought, you know what, if the segregation of the city really bothers me, why am I expecting somebody else to do something about it? Why am I not doing something about it? And so I started making a plan to move into the inner city and I had several communities.

that I looked into, one actually was Inglewood where I live now, but I couldn't find any roommates to move down there with me. And so there was one community that there were a couple other girls that were open to moving in. So we moved in and yeah, it was a crazy year. We experienced a lot on that block, a lot of shootings, a lot of drugs, squatters set a house on fire, about three houses got torn down.

that had been basically used for all sort of crazy purposes. But we got so close to the families in our building. We had two families that lived above and below us. And the kids would come over all the time. We'd have potlucks. We'd bring our friends in who basically were scared to be there. But it was building bridges. And so long story short,

tried a lot of things on the West side, stuff was not progressing. I was determined to make a difference, but all I knew how to do was open my home. And I thought, how am I going to change the issues in this, you know, that are existing in the inner city by offering a couple kids an afterschool program? I just, I felt like there had to be more. So a couple years after that, met my husband on a blind.

Well, he says blind date. I said it was a meeting. But anyway, we met, we connected over our desire to, you know, change the inner city and got engaged six months later. Seven months after that, got married. A couple months after that, moved to Inglewood to a house we had scraped together our wedding money, borrowed money, and rehabbed a property and started everything out of our home. So at that time, I was still a hairdresser.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

We were trying to start our nonprofit. My husband was working full time on it. I was supporting us doing hair. And on the days I wasn't doing hair, we were running home school programs out of our, sorry, not home school, afterschool programs out of our home for the kids on the block trying to introduce them to sustainability. And so we kept trying to connect people to jobs in sustainability that we had heard about, gotten connected to, and really,

we're getting nowhere and we realized one day that we would have to be the ones to create the jobs. And it felt like such an insurmountable task, but we just went back to our faith, which encouraged us to not give up and also to look at creation, to look at what God had already given us. And there was a ton of vacant land. And so, food wasn't gonna work because not gonna make any money with food. And so we thought, what about flowers? It's a...

did some research, it's a $35 billion a year industry, but 80 % comes from overseas. And so we thought, what if some of that could come from the hood? And what if we could create an industry, a bedrock industry here in the inner city with flowers? It's something that people can walk to, it's right in their community. And so we started out of our basement. And at first we tried to work with flower farmers, we tried to work with floors, we tried to...

sell flowers to flower shops and it was, nobody was taking us seriously. Nobody believed, you know, I think everybody saw this as a cute nonprofit program, but we were determined to turn this into something that could truly alleviate poverty, which was our mission to alleviate poverty using sustainability. And so I realized I'd have to become the florist and we booked an event.

And I started researching like crazy, practicing, buying trainings. And luckily, you know, floor street isn't too far from doing hair. So I thought back to, you know, that time when I was thinking like, should I be a bartender or a hairstylist? And ultimately the creative aspect of hair really won out. And just...

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

really allowed me to use my right brain in something that could support me and get me connected to people. And it was providential because I was able to pivot to becoming a florist so easily. In the first bouquet arrangement I made, I feel like I was doing an updo. I was looking at the angles, I was looking at the sort of the shape, and I was looking at the colors. And it was just amazing to see how quickly I was able to pivot.

And because I had to teach myself, I then was able to start training the youth to do it. And because my identity wasn't around floristry, I could really let go of that part and really work to uplift and encourage the youth to become those head florists, those floral designers. And that's where we are now.

Srini Rao:

Wow. Well, it's funny you mentioned sort of one side of Chicago being predominantly white. I mean, I knew about the South Side of Chicago. I had no idea it was so segregated. And my sort of closest experience to reading what you're describing was Sudhir Venkatesh's book, Gang Leader, for a day. And I was just like, oh my god, this is crazy. But I'm really curious. Because the thing is, I think one of the things I'm always curious about when I get to talk to people like you is that,

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Yeah. It's a, yeah.

Srini Rao:

Most of us don't get a front row seat to the things you're describing, like we see it through the lens of media. What do we not see? Like where does the media, what are we not seeing as the public about this environment, both negative and positive?

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Mm -hmm.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Sure. Gang Leader for a Day was such a monumental book for me personally. I mean, that was life -changing for me because it really connected me to what I had seen when I was 15. And it really, it was, you know, at that time when I read it, I was already here in Chicago living. And so it was one of those books that I read that really propelled me to, you know,

doing what I'm doing today. So I'm really grateful for the writers and the researchers that have come before me, but I knew I had to live in the middle of it, right? I couldn't do it as a research project. I had to live it because how are you gonna convince somebody that you are there for them if you're not living beside them, experiencing what they experience? So I feel like the, we all know that,

the media is, you know, it likes to show the worst case scenario often because of, you know, that's that part of human nature that just wants to see a car crash, right? And it's unfortunate, right, that that is what ends up making the headlines because there's so much, it's like two dimensional, right? And then, and everything is three dimensional. So, you know, you get this idea that like, oh,

it's a war zone. And if I even walked down the street, you know, I'm going to get, I'm, you know, just, I'm going to get shot. And you kind of forget this, a community full of people just going to work, you know, they're walking their dogs, they have kids, right. And when we moved here, it was, it was very, you know, it was amazing because we really felt like this house that we found was a miracle because it had fallen through and,

because of all of the court issues, the violations it had, the investor backed out and we were able to scoop it up, but it meant we had to go to court several times to show that the work we were doing was going to take it out of, you know, of those violations of the violation court. But the neighbor across the street, she had lived here since the 90s and she said, you know, what's amazing about this block? She said, it has always been a neutral block.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

She said, there's one gang over there on that street, you know, one over. There's another gang over there on the other street. And they've always tried to take this street as their territory and they've never been able to. And I just thought that's a miracle. Like we've been placed in this little, the neutral zone. And from here, you know, we're gonna be making an impact. But those first couple, those first couple of years were scary. There were...

you know, shootings on our block, shootings on the block over, shootings on the block up. You know, I used to walk to the coffee shop with, when my kids were little, stop doing that when there was a shooting, a block over, right when I was on one block over from that, the guy who got shot drove over and I had to decide, do I high -till it to the coffee shop or do I high -till it back and risk the guy who shot, the guy who just came on the block?

coming back around after him and them shooting at them and essentially across the street to me. So there is that, right? It's not that the media is showing something that's not happening, but the thing is people still have to live their life. Kids are still, they still have got to play. They still, people, they don't have AC. They gotta hang out at night outside on the porch.

you know, a lot of life happens on the porch. You hang out together. It's where you sort of connect with your friends and your neighbors. I remember when I moved to the West side, I remember somebody telling me like, I can't believe, you know, this child was shot at 10 o 'clock at night. What was she doing out there? And I'm thinking, because she didn't have AC and it's cool outside. And so you're going to get relief from your hot house in the evening if you don't have AC. So it's a, it's a

a two -dimensional view that we get, but it's a 3D life that people are living. And you have to just keep living. You can't live in fear. You can't live afraid of what's gonna happen. You have to keep going. And there's so much beauty in the day -to -day amidst the chaos and amidst the things that are so tragic and so hard. You know, you still see people celebrating and living life because they really realize that...

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

You know, we have to keep going and we have to keep going in the environment that maybe we can't get out of. And so, you know, I've learned a lot about resilience and my husband talks about when he was in Thailand doing Peace Corps, he said death was really normal there. It was people were dying all the time. Life was super hard. And it kind of took away this fear of dying in a strange way because it

kind of became more a part of life. And I don't want to see death. I don't want to see destruction. We just, you know, a couple of weeks ago found out one of the guys from our first group that was here was killed with his one year old daughter in a drive -by. And I don't want that. I don't want to see that. But you also can't think that life stops because of tragedy. You have to keep going and you have to...

to live that next day because you are still here and you are still living. And for Keele and I, my husband and I, tomorrow is about getting one more youth off the street. It's about making one more spot. It's about putting one more dollar into this community and relieving some of that suffering and hopefully seeing some of that death and destruction go away.

Srini Rao:

Yeah. Tell me about the kids in this community, the ones that you end up working with. What's the path they're headed down when you meet them? And how do you get them off of it when they've been so conditioned to it? Because so often, I think we don't really understand the role that environment plays in shaping people's reality. I remember I've probably seen Boys in the Hood a dozen times. And every time I watch it, I grew up in Southern California. I think to myself, I don't think I've ever even

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Right.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

You

Mm -hmm.

Srini Rao:

through Compton and let alone like this is what these people experience. And I've interviewed people on the show who grew up there. And you know, you kind of realize it's like, okay, but like this is definitely and I saw it in the favelas in Brazil too, where I was like, okay, these kids have two paths, you know, it's become a professional soccer player or drug dealer. Like those are their two sort of like, those are the two aspirations they have.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Right.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Yeah.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Yeah.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Yeah, so the thing about the inner city, I think, to understand is that, you know, when you're in poverty, you can't like, the world is not your oyster. The block is your oyster. And if you are, you know, if it is as contentious as block to block, you stay on your block. That is your world. That is your reality.

If two teens are solving a beef and it just so happens that everybody has guns, that's how it may be solved. And that's reality for people. And it's not that people want it that way, but it's what life looks like. And so I think for us, one, it was important to move in and to...

Be a part of the community first and foremost just like hey, we're neighbors. We're raising our kids here We are you know, nobody was gonna trust us if we came in we're clearly outsiders You know, my husband grew up in an affluent black family in Madison, Wisconsin You know, I'm white from Kansas like we don't fit in. Okay, so if we don't move in No one's gonna trust us believe us. We're getting nowhere. So that's the first step second step was

the realization we had to create the job right here. So the jobs that existed for a lot of people were a two hour bus ride or three different buses and you're working third shift. So how are you gonna keep that job? You're not, you're gonna, it's not sustainable. It has to be something where you can walk to in your community because also the culture, the cultural shift of kind of the culture of the inner city and kind of the culture outside the inner city is very different. And...

you may not have learned how to translate one from the other and you may not be able to succeed in that world outside the inner city. So that was the second thing is jobs right here in the community, people can come to that is within their culture, but also easy to access, easy to learn, easy to do. So that was the second step. And so the...

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

The third step was how are we gonna convince people of the flowers, right? You know, is it gonna be hard for people to believe that this is gonna be something that is worth them trying, you know? But one, if you're paying real money, if your money's green, like sign me up, right? If people, you know, they're like, what do I have to do? I have to cut this flower, okay. Like, you paying me, okay. So third.

I don't know what point I'm on at this point, but it was about real jobs with real pay, right? It wasn't a program, it wasn't a stipend. It wasn't just this flowery like, oh, I want to get you exposed to the floral industry. I'm going to pay you a stipend and you're going to have this great experience and I'm going to feel good about myself and I'm going to go tell everybody how great I am because I did this program, you know, in the inner city. No, real money, real job.

So, you know, we just started with what we had and it was hard to convince the youth at first, but the money was real. So we had some stick, even though it was working in our basement and harvesting flowers, you know, in the vacant lot that we, the first farm was on our block. But as we sort of gained traction and grew, it became more, more appealing. We were able to give year round work when we started to,

be able to offer flowers year round. We have a solar powered tulip program now where we grow tulips in the winter. We can offer jobs year round. We have some guys that we hire full time year round. One of them is our neighbor. And he just got his, well not got his sister, she had to do our trial, but his sister's now hired. And I just pulled her aside last night and told her that she had...

past the initial test of two days and she is now working five days a week. These are our neighbors. We're giving jobs to our neighbors. It's so amazing to see our one neighbor, he has two, three kids and he's able to now support his family. His little sister now who's working in the flower shop, you know, she's able to relieve her mom by being able to buy some of her own things. So if the money's real,

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

then you're gonna be able to get some people to buy in. And the more we were able to grow and the more legit it was able to be, we moved out of the basement and into a real flower shop. We spent a lot of money to make that thing look nice. And I actually had some guy who was working on a storefront down the street. I don't know if he thought I'm white, he's white, so like he can tell me inappropriate things because he thinks we think the same, but.

He said, yeah, I looked at this and I thought, what's a North side business doing down here in Inglewood? And I just kind of, you know, like go away, you know, because I was so offended, you know, but that's, you know, deep down, that's what people think, you know, it's like, oh, the hood is, you know, it's just good for corner stores and you know, no one is going to invest in there because why, what's it worth, you know? But we felt the opposite. We felt like God said,

Spare no expense. And we saw why when it was done, because we want the youth that come in to feel that they belong here, that this belongs in Inglewood, that they belong here. So they're doing high -end floral. Then they're going on site with us, not in some sort of program to like, hey, come see, you know, downtown Chicago. And I'm not giving you any pathways to be a part of this, but.

look, let's go look around and I can feel good about myself because I took some kids from the hood on a tour. No, it's you deserve to be here because you are the youth florist doing this event and you're gonna, you know what to do and you are providing the support to the florist. And we've had couples where they wanna come down personally at their wedding, come down and personally give the tip to the florist because it matters so much to them.

that these youth florists were doing their flowers. And that goes such a long ways, you know, for two young people who feel like, hey, I deserve to be here, I belong here, I'm a part of something and, you know, I'm bringing some beauty, I'm doing something for somebody's, the most important day of their life, you know? So as far as youth, you know, we get all the way from kind of, you know, youth who've had to get picked up because there's a...

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

you know, there's a hit on their head. Like if they leave the block, they could get shot. We've had that type of youth all the way to, you know, the straight A student who goes to the neighborhood school, which by the way, I walked into to do some recruiting from students. I walked into the whole freshmen boys class in a fight. I'm telling you like 40 boys in one big fight. That's what I walked into. And she told me, you see what I have to put up with here. So.

There are youth that are excelling and smart, but she could fall through the cracks. She's got a lot on her plate. Her mom is trying to piece together income. She has two little brothers that she's helping to raise. She's not going far for college because her mom needs her. And she's definitely not giving up this job because I know from little things that I've overheard her say that she supports her family with this. And so...

And not every kid's a gangbanger, but a lot of kids are going to fall through the cracks because the support systems, the networks, we forget how much of jobs are just connections and networks and relationships. And if you don't have those relationships, you may not get into that circle and you may be the smartest person in your neighborhood. And it doesn't mean that you're going to be able to access that opportunity.

you know, if it's going to come through relationships. So we really are here for the whole gamut of youth. We don't ask a lot of questions. We don't pry. We want them to feel that, you know, they are here because we believe in them and we believe that they can, you know, do the job at a high level. We have very high expectations because we believe it is how we respect them. We're not here to give them an easy pass because they have a hard life.

That's paternalism, right? It's not what we're about. We're about really showing them that they can do it and raising a high bar so that they can meet it. And whether you have a rough background or whether you're excelling in your world, we're going to take you in and we're going to give you an opportunity.

Srini Rao:

So a couple of last questions. You mentioned that your husband comes from an affluent black family, you're white. And I wondered about this. I remember looking at that online. When you talk to your kids about race, what is that conversation like? Because it's funny because I remember when George Floyd was happening, all this stuff, I lived with two white roommates, as an Indian person. And my friend Matt said he was like,

Dude, he was like, I just realized that my race is like water to a fish. I was like, yeah, that's cause you're white. Like I was like, it's just the idea of, you know, like when your skin is white, like racism is something you, you might witness. Like we were in grand Junction, Colorado. This was when we were first moving here and we'd been driving for like 15 hours and I was super tired. And, uh, we walked into the hotel bar and I didn't even notice. I literally was like, I just want a glass of wine and a burger.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Uh huh. Yeah.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Right.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Yeah, yeah.

Srini Rao:

And he caught it. He was like, dude, he was like, we need to get the hell out of here. I'm like, why? He was like, everybody in here was like laughing and joking. And the second you walked in here, this place went dead silent. And I didn't notice like, you know, that was the funny thing is that he caught it. And I didn't.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Jeez. Yeah.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Wow, yeah. Yeah, so I feel like a while ago, Time Magazine had something about, I'm gonna screw up the statistic, but I just remember the cover was this beautiful biracial girl, and it had an article about how in like 50 years, or the year 2050, or something, something with 50 in it, essentially we were gonna be more of a melting pot than ever before. So,

You know, we live in an all black neighborhood. You know, I'm white and so I'm definitely in the minority here. And, you know, definitely our kids have started asking things. So there's six and five. So we have twins that are six and a five year old. And, you know, our daughter, you know, she's, she's very, she's our observant one. And she, you know, she'll be like, well, why, you know, why don't.

why are you and daddy, you know, why are you and daddy married? Because you don't look like each other. So then I go through the whole thing like, okay, well, you know, am I your mom? Do I look like you? What's under our skin? And just kind of talking through it and welcoming those questions and being okay with it. But they will say, I'm brown, daddy's black, mommy's white, and I'm brown. And I'm like, yeah, you know, you don't have to say like, oh, am I white or am I black? There's not two races in the world.

Srini Rao:

Hahaha!

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Like, you know, we talk a lot about heaven's gonna be full of everybody. Everybody's gonna be up there. And so like, that's what's beautiful. That's what's great. And so, you know, but it's also like having them be, you know, proud of the people that have come before them. You know, Keelan always says, hey, the story of African Americans, it's one of triumph because look at all the triumph that, you know, we have.

we have made it through. And it was interesting. We were visiting Keelan's grandfather and he was telling some stories about where he was growing up in Arkansas. You couldn't look a white woman in the eye and you had to look down and just different things he experienced. And my son whispered, I'm glad I'm not black. I was like Josiah, you need to be, I said, look, it was very hard, but you need to be proud of the part of you that's black. You,

are a little bit black and a little bit white mixed together. And so you need to be proud of that part of you, you know, not be like, oh, that's, that's terrible. Like, I don't want to have that. And it's like, you know, it's a little six year old trying to wrap, wrap his head around, you know, like, how does this world work and where do I fit into it? And so, yeah, I'm just, I'm, we're really trying to teach about character over race, because I think, you know,

I think MLK really emphasizes a lot of like, hey, we're not gonna get far if we are pro one race over the other, right? And it's never gonna work if we're elevating one group over the next. It's gonna work when we become the beloved community, when we all are able to see the value in each other and the beauty in each other. And so,

you know, I'm glad that they are, you know, understanding what it's like to be brown and that, you know, they, you know, we are in different homeschool groups that have, you know, other mixed families and black families and white families. And so it's nice that they're exposed to lots of different types of people at a young age and for them to, you know, start to understand like, hey, what is it to be about, you know, the content of someone's character?

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

versus the color of their skin. And that's really what we want them to take forward.

Srini Rao:

Well, this has been incredible. I have one final question for you, which is how we finish all of our interviews at the Unmistakable Creative. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Hmm.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Well, I do believe that we are all made unique. And I personally believe that we're made in the image of God because of what I believe in my faith. So I think it's the core of who we are. It's really who we are deep down. And that is going to be what no one else in the world has. And I think continuing to...

understand that and value that and display that. I think that is always what's going to shine through.

Srini Rao:

Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story and your wisdom and your insights. Well, listeners, this has been really, really beautiful and insightful. Where can people find out more about you, the work that you do and everything else?

Hannah Bonham Blackwell:

Yeah, so we are at southsideblooms .com. We're on Instagram, Southside Blooms. If you wanna see pictures, we try to give a lot of behind the scenes so people can see the real work happening. On Southside Blooms, we have a shop page. If you wanna purchase something, we ship nationwide. A lot of products that are shelf stable and starting Mother's Day, we're gonna be...

shipping flowers nationally as well. And so that's a great way to support our social enterprise. And then ChicagoEcoHouse .com, that is our umbrella nonprofit that is over Southside Blooms and that has information as well, a little more about sort of who we are and kind of the stories that have shaped us. So either of those will give you the probably the information that you want.

Srini Rao:

Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.

Hannah Bonham Blackwell | How a Florist is Transforming Lives in Inner City Chicago

Candid Conversations: Elevate Your Thinking with Masters of Their Craft