A D'votional to Sustainability With Chiara D'Amore

I was a few paragraphs into reporting on a few lovely hours I spent with the founder and president of the Community Ecology Institute, Chiara D’Amore, when it hit me–I was inside. You dolt, Colleen, I thought!

I should have been writing this from the outdoors, a bench in a local park, perhaps. A bird would alight on my shoulder, and I’d smile at it. As I looked down at my computer screen, a rainbow would shoot across the sky behind me. I’d take a deep breath in, inhaling the a slightly spicy freesia scent, as Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons played and…okay, too much. And “too much” is so not Chiara. “Just right” is more like it. Perhaps this is why Robert and I have been drawn to her ever since we came to Howard County. She has an aplomb that is the epitome of the balance RoCo is trying to achieve of late. Nowhere is her evenhandedness more striking, and more meaningful, than in the way she lives her passion for the outdoors.

Polar Vortices and Life Passions

Chiara’s passion for the environment doesn’t manifest in necessarily fiery, arduous, or vim-and-vigor ways – her energy is very stable. One of the amazing things about her love of the outdoors, though, is how it suffuses her whole life. It’s the background, the atmosphere, and the feel all at the same time, much like climate itself. That’s another thing that drew me to Chiara’s environmentalism. It’s clearly a true spirituality although that’s not a topic we discussed explicitly as Chiara, her son Lance (whose name I changed to protect the cute), and I made our way from the George Howard Building to Syriana Cafe in Old Ellicott City. The three of us had just attended a County Council hearing on the major environmental issues affecting Howard County as told by leaders in local sustainability.

Chiara and I huddled in our coats on the first day of the recent polar vortex. Lance, meanwhile, managed to continue reading the second of two books he’d been tearing through with the speed of a textual Hermes without even looking up to walk. How he didn’t trip, stumble, or make one false move, I’ll never know!

“The part of my work I love the most is those moments where I’ve invited people out into nature and they are visibly experiencing joy, wonder, a sense of connection, and sometimes even awe,” Chiara told me about her environmental non-profit work. It wasn’t until she said, though, that it’s about the world we leave to our children that I realized it’s truly transcendental–spiritual–work. It’s long-term stuff, but it’s not even as time-bound as Genesis to Messiah, it’s more like Big Bang to Fossil-Free-Future.

Coffee and Camels

Just then, our waitress, Rasha, brought Chiara her Syrian coffee. Chiara smiled at her and recalled how her father got a job building greenhouses in Saudi Arabia when she was very young and she had pet camels. From there her family moved back to Virginia, where she’d been born, and on to Illinois where she lived on a hobby-farm and had goats. Finally, they settled in Howard County when she was in fourth grade.

“I really grew up feeling very connected to nature, but I think I was at the tail-end of the generations who did,” Chiara said.

When Chiara was in her early teens her mother met a college student named Joe Allen. He’d been in a serious car accident that resulted in profound physical and mental challenges. Chiara’s mother became his patient advocate, and he came to live with and later near the D’Amores. Joe had been a devoted environmental activist before the accident, and over the years of their friendship he taught Chiara how to translate her love of nature into environmental action. For example, when they were both students at Howard Community College (HCC), they worked together to start the school’s first environmental club.

I could see how much their friendship meant to her when she fondly recalled working with Joe and other students to sort recycling behind the school.

After HCC, Chiara got into the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill where she studied biology and international studies (they didn’t have an environmental degree yet). The day her parents dropped Chiara off at her new school, Joe lost his life to suicide as a result of the pain he was in. It was, simply, hard for him to live with the medical and mental health complications the car wreck had caused.

“A part of what drives my environmental work is living Joe’s legacy forward,” she told me, her voice breaking. The deep brown of her eyes dimmed slightly with tears. Lance looked up at us, and she smiled at him.

Also: Deanna Peel, Sen Guy Guzzone’s (D-13) Chief of Staff filled Robert in on what it takes to lead a leader.

The Doctorate Will See You Now

Chiara would go on to get a masters in environmental science and engineering from UNC, work as an environmental consultant for thirteen years, and complete a doctorate in sustainability education from Prescott College. Her research focused on better understanding how to get people to care about and take action to protect the natural environment.

“I fell into a lineage of research that found that three primary experiences help people have an environmental ethic: getting outside, especially when they’re young; having a green role model; and participating in a community organization where they can take environmental action,” she told me. I let out a “mmm” of fascination as I took a way-too generous bite of my felafel.

In 2014, she founded Columbia Families In Nature (CFIN) as a part of her doctoral research. She was doing an experiment to see what would happen if she offered the three above experiences to area families. Almost five years after its inception CFIN has offered over 220 free nature-based events to the HoCo community.

After she finished her PhD she created the Community Ecology Institute (CEI), a local non-profit organization, to create socially and ecologically healthy communities by helping people create meaningful connections with the natural world, according to its website.

Chiara’s vision for it is to foster a world in which people and nature thrive together.

I asked a mutual friend of mine and Chiara’s, local immigration attorney Becca Niburg, if she’d ever been to a CFIN event. She and her two elementary-school aged children had.

“I didn’t feel like we were outsiders looking in. Chiara made us part of the process,” Becca said of the hike she and her two children went on with CFIN to learn about local watersheds.

“My intention with CEI is to put best practices in place here in Howard County. I want to create tools and resources for other communities to see how we’ve made meaningful, community-based environmental progress,” Chiara told me.

Earth: Love It Or We’ll Leave It

Chiara’s work is very much about creating a healthy environment for the people she loves, like Lance, and her daughter, Sylvie (also not her actual name). Really it’s about a love of all people, not just her people. That’s why it’s very spiritual–devotional. It’s about big-picture healthy communities. If you need proof, just take the fact that Lance and Sylvie are under ten, but she’s been advocating for the environment for almost twenty years now. In fact, her work is so long-term benefit-based she might not be around to see what actually happens as a result of any given thing she does. But she keeps on doing it.

“Most of the people who claim [that climate change isn’t happening] are, knowingly or not, are doing the bidding of companies that benefit from producing dirty energy,” wrote David Leonhardt, one of RoCo’s favorite journalists in an Opinion e-newsletters for the New York Times. Clearly, Chiara isn’t one of them–and neither are Robert and me.

“Climate change keeps me up at night,” Chiara said with a deep sigh. “I want to be able to look my kids in the eye and be able to say I did everything I could to help create a healthy environment for them to grow up in”.

I nodded that I agreed, balancing some tabouleh on my fork.

“Climate change keeps me up at night–but climate change denial gives me nightmares,” I said.

Luckily, though, there are organizations like CEI, ones that help communities like Howard County figure out how they can mitigate climate change and be more resilient in the face of changes we are already seeing. ”

Even though climate change is a global issue, it’s important to look for local actions,” Chiara said.

“We planted over 400 native trees last year,” she said. “But we also created a social network, often of people who would never have met otherwise and helped them feel more empowered to take care of the environment.”

“Many of my closest friends are people I have met through CFIN and CEI,” she said, smiling and nodding. “This work has opened doors that I didn’t necessarily anticipate.” That, readers, is the magic of the human experience.

The next step for Chiara and CEI is to create a “Community Ecology Center.” It’ll be a place-based learning laboratory for all things sustainability. She wants people to be able to learn through hands-on experience about creating conservation landscapes (native trees, rain gardens, pollinator gardens, etc.), organic gardening, waste reduction, energy efficiency and renewables, etc. She has her eyes on a special place in HoCo. Her sparkled more than they normally do when she said she hopes to go public with this next adventure in the spring!

A little over a year ago Chiara walked away from her high-level consulting job to focus on CEI. The institute’s gotten several grants for it’s work, but it’s mostly been a volunteer labor of love for her. Although she teaches climate education and civic ecology to graduate students at Prescott College, it’s no secret teachers aren’t paid enough for their indispensable work.

I admired her, then, for not giving up what she loves despite pay that doesn’t match her contribution. I thought about Joe, too, and how profoundly people can impact and inspire one another, even when they may not know that’s what they are doing. They are just being true to their passions.

“It’s not always as simple as, ‘Do what you love, though,’” I said, with a sympathetic tilt of my head and a glance over at Rasha smiling softly as she made a loud cappuccino behind the bar.

“That’s a good a place to start from, but it takes more than that,” Chiara said. “I really want Howard County to be a leader in environmental sustainability, but we aren’t yet living up to our potential in this area. Time is of the essence,” Chiara said.

Mommy and Me and Sustainability

As we paid for our victuals, Chiara and I talked about the challenge that so many women face of having to balance motherhood and work. In my zeal to agree with dropped my check on my lap.

“Women should be supported in doing the work they feel called to do–out in the world and with their families if they choose to have them–without feeling they have to jeopardize or sacrifice one for the other. I feel like I am hiking a lightly trod middle path in the way I am trying to blend my environmental and community work and my motherhood.”

“Her heart, her sensitivity, her compassion, her fight…she’s just a beautiful person and a wonderful mother,” Deeba Jafri, a local marketing consultant and good friend of RoCo’s told me. That’s what she–and we both, in fact–love most about Chiara.

I looked over at Lance and asked him if he was interested in the same issues that his mom cares so much about. He nodded so vigorously a lock of hair shook in place. I considered suggesting we do a two-person book club and read Ned Tillman’s The Big Melt, which I’d left the last third of unread despite how much I loved it. I was grateful when Chiara said she’d want to read it first–and it’s in her to-read pile–to make sure it’s age-appropriate for a nine year old. It gave me an out, which I wanted only because Lance’s reading speed would put me to shame!

Chiara’s very much a believer in thinking globally and acting locally, I thought, as I walked back to my car parked on Main Street outside Caplan’s, bracing against the wind. I smiled as I pushed myself up the craggy sidewalk. Something she said just as we were gathering up our things was an example of what I love about that concept: the infinite interconnectedness of the widespread/right-here tension. By acting locally, you change the world. In the same way, by modeling her work here after what’s proven successful based on research and people’s lived experiences elsewhere–with free events to enhance DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion)–Chiara’s work doesn’t just simultaneously honor our difference/sameness, it actively creates commonality. That’s a big deal in a world that’s constantly trying to separate us.

“I really try to build bridges between different communities. And if I’m having that sort of impact, that’s my dream,” she had said back at lunch.

I rounded the crest of the incline in the road and thought about how at a CEI event, a map Chiara and a group used to guide their hike didn’t totally prepare them for their sojourn. The trail it showed was overgrown and out of use.

“But we had a goal, didn’t quit, and made it to our destination,” she said.

And now, readers the moment you knew was coming since you started reading this article is here. It’s no wonder “amore” means “love” in Italian. Because, after all, as my car radio reminded me Dean Martin sang: “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore/When the world seems to shine like you’ve had too much wine, that’s amore/When you walk in a dream but you know you’re not dreaming, signore/Scuzzi me, but you see, back in old Napol that’s amore.”

It sure is, readers!

Thanks for reading! Check back with us here at rocoinhoco.com every week as Robert, Colleen (and pup, Moses) get to know the many facets—one each week–of this prismatic place called Howard County. We want to take you along with us, so follow us on Twitter at @rocoinhoco, join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagram at @rocoinhoco.