CNN crowned a Chicagoan for its 2025 Hero of the Year.
Quilen Blackwell won the votes with Southside Blooms, his nonprofit that is transforming vacant lots into flower farms and employing young people.
“I’ve got to thank my wife, Hannah. I can’t take full credit for this. Jesus is the one who got us here,” he said, while accepting the award from CNN. “He’s really the hero of the year for us every year.”
So far, Southside Blooms has taken six empty lots and turned them into flower farms. Flowers are then arranged and sold, with bouquets starting at $50. Blackwell and his wife’s organization currently has 25 employees who are primarily between the ages of 16 and 25. For him, it’s about giving career opportunities to young people in areas with systemic disinvestment. Englewood, where some of his farms operate, has 40% of residents living in poverty, compared to the Windy City’s 17% rate overall.
“As long as they’re getting all of the ingredients they need to be successful, there’s nothing that they can’t do,” Blackwell said, before comparing nourishing young people to being a lot like growing flowers.
Blackwell had an unlikely journey to social enterprise. In fact, he was not born or raised in Chicago, but it’s where he chose to make his mark. The 40-year-old grew up middle class in Madison, Wisconsin before going to college, then joining the Peace Corps and serving in rural Thailand. He moved to Chicago for ministry school and tutored students at a high school in Englewood. That’s when he realized he “could be any one of these kids,” he told CNN. “They’re people who want a chance at something better.”
He met his future wife Hannah Bonham around this time, and they decided to work with purpose together. Southside Blooms came in 2019. It not only has its social component, but addresses a business problem: the US spends billions of dollars on flowers annually, but most are imported, leaving an opportunity for locally grown florals.
Though the nonprofit plans to expand to other neighborhoods ahead, Southside Blooms is currently rooted in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood. The area is home to one of the city’s 11 selective enrollment high schools as well as, what is often talked about most in the news, one of its highest crime rates. This is the result of decades of redlining, white flight, disinvestment, and more — which Chicago photographer Tonika Johnson explored in her “Folded Map” project comparing opposite streets on Chicago’s more affluent and white North Side with its South Side.
Blackwell plans to expand to the West Side next, which has been plagued with similar issues, to support young folks there.
He and his wife’s work follows in the footsteps of community efforts in recent years to give youth opportunities while transforming a neglected landscape. Cordia Pugh, who has led the Hermitage Street Community Garden and Veterans Garden in Englewood, focused on community gardens addressing food insecurity in the area.
As CNN’s Hero of the Year, Blackwell will receive $100,000 to support his work, a $10,000 cash award, an additional $50,000 from the Elevate Prize Foundation, and donation-matching up to $50,000 from Elevate. Expect to see much more blossom ahead from the Chicago nonprofit.