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When Christopher Walsh '00 began working as a landscape architect, he had not pictured himself designing schoolyards in Rwanda for the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village. "I had been working as a residential landscape designer," Walsh says. "I got involved in this project about a year ago when this school was first being built."
Nevertheless, Walsh seems euphoric about what was both a challenging and eye-opening experience.
It is a journey that began at the College. Although majoring in theatre, Walsh got his first taste of architecture in his senior year, where he studied under the tutelage of Colonial Williamsburg landscape architect John McFarlane. After graduating, Walsh earned a certificate in landscape design from George Washington University in 2003. Walsh then went on to work in residential and commercial development in Washington, D.C., and Chicago. But it wasn't until he heard about the Village from his brother that Walsh began what would be an altogether different experience.
"I came on board as the landscape designer last fall," Walsh says. "I did my site work in January of this year."
The Agahozo Shalom Youth Village was founded in 2007 as a community for Rwanda's orphans. Located in the country's Eastern Province, the Village comprises 153 acres of land and includes a high school, residential housing, a dining hall, science laboratories, WiFi Internet access and a sustainable agricultural farm. With classes now underway, the Village hopes to enroll 500 students in its high school, graduating 125 each year.
"They select specific orphans who have the desire to achieve more," Walsh says, "who lack immediate family members because their families were killed in the genocide, and then came back and tried to re-acclimate into society."
As volunteer landscape designer who takes unpaid days to travel to Africa, Walsh's assignment was to devise a landscape plan for the Village. But his challenges were varied.
"It was really difficult to do because there isn't design in Rwanda," Walsh says. "Streets are built because this is how people walk to get from one building to the other. So I was trying to get rhythm out of this space that is otherwise pretty chaotic." Walsh also had to perform a significant amount of research regarding Rwandan agriculture before he traveled overseas.
In his design of the school area of the Village, Walsh used a method that combined practicality with the Village's emphasis on gardens as places of reflection and remembrance. For the residential portion, Walsh created a basic blueprint of a home that could be altered through four separate styles.
Though he continues to work as a landscape designer for Old Town Gardens in Chicago, Walsh says he has taken a lot from his experiences in Rwanda.
"[It taught me] how much in my life I take for granted," he says. "Living in Chicago, having an education, having a loving family, we as Americans always want more and more, and very rarely stop to smell the roses. ... This new hope that is being given to these select kids is really heart-warming."
To those recently graduated from the College, Walsh urges taking a year of service, emphasizing the global-mindedness, challenges and rewards it can bring.
"It really did open my eyes to what is out there and what a difference one person can make," Walsh says.
He plans to return to the Village this fall.
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