Tracie and Karim: Connection and Belonging through Service

How do we find our place in the communities where we live? For City of Cambridge volunteers Tracie Gordon and Karim Razzaz, one lasting way is through service.

By volunteering on the Recycling Advisory Committee (RAC), Tracie builds belonging by inspiring others while helping the city meet its sustainability goals. For Karim, serving on the city's Commission on Immigrant Rights and Citizenship (CIRC), connection has come from helping newly arrived immigrants navigate life—and thrive—in a new place.

Connections, relationships, service—all vital pieces of belonging, and as Tracie and Karim told CV volunteer writer Chris Featherman, all possible through volunteering.

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Tracie Gordon: Civic Service by Doing, Right Where You Are

Tracie Gordon doesn’t wait for an invitation to fix a problem or take action. If she sees someone discarding an old T-shirt, she skips the lecture on recycling and instead grabs some thread and a pair of scissors and shows them how to turn the T-shirt into a reusable shopping bag. She brings this same energy—kinetic and impromptu—to her second three-year appointment as a volunteer on Cambridge’s Recycling Advisory Committee (RAC), where she treats the city's sustainability challenges and goals not as abstract policy issues, but as puzzles to be solved through doing. “I’m a problem solver,” she says. “It’s just my nature.”

For Tracie, doing means translating the committee’s official advisory mandate—providing research, feedback, and public outreach to the Department of Public Works—into practical, community-wide impact. In helping the city carry out its Zero Waste master plan, she draws on her summers living in Switzerland researching international frameworks to propose practical solutions for Cambridge. “Getting people to zero is my goal,” she says. “Always able to recycle, always able to reuse, always able to reinvent.”

Tracie’s volunteer work reaches well beyond sustainability. Serving on multiple city committees, including Participatory Budgeting, she views civic engagement as the link between city resources and daily neighborhood life. When she first arrived in Cambridge to study at Harvard, she felt the city completed her personal puzzle. "I came to Cambridge and I needed, like, 100 more pieces," she reflects. Now, by serving the city, she helps piece together the needs of the broader community. “Every time I can help someone else,” Tracie says, “it keeps filling in my little blocks.”

It’s a view of public service that Tracie sees as democratic, one that brings civic duty to ground level, where everyone can participate and belong. "Volunteering falls into every single thing we do," she emphasizes, encouraging others to be guided to opportunities that align with whatever they can offer. "You don't have to give 10 hours a day. You can give an hour a week. You can volunteer right where you are."

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Karim Razzaz: The Power and Beauty of Connection

As a volunteer member of Cambridge’s Commission on Immigrant Rights and Citizenship (CIRC) since 2018, Karim Razzaz grounds his public service in relationship building. “Volunteering is not just about serving,” he says, his eyes widening as he smiles. “It’s about your social life. You are building new friendships, building new connections, more than just the service itself.”

Putting relationships first comes from Karim’s own experiences. As an immigrant, he understands the challenges of navigating the complex, often disorienting systems of a new place. As a volunteer, he works to lower such barriers for the city’s new arrivals. “Many immigrants come with advanced degrees—engineers or doctors,” Karim notes, but struggle to find work that matches their qualifications. “They need information. They need someone to guide them so they can find their way.”

On the commission, Karim focuses on connecting the community with city resources, a process he believes begins with access—to information on finding housing, registering children for school, and navigating healthcare coverage. Access also includes providing immigrants with both English-language classes and information from the city translated into their home languages. It means both inviting immigrants to City Hall and meeting them where they already are. “You have to go to them,” he says.

This vision of outreach has taken Karim to the city's playing fields. As a board member for Cambridge Youth Soccer, he has helped grow the league to over 2,000 players, using the sport to welcome immigrant families and help more girls participate. By linking his public service to the soccer pitches where his kids also play, he gets to balance family life with watching community integration happen in real-time. “I see the city of Cambridge as a role model for different cities, and I want this role model to grow,” Karim says.

To manage these commitments, Karim draws on the strength of his community relationships. “I'm a social person,” he says, smiling again. “I charge my energy with people.” By channeling that energy into service, he helps ensure that Cambridge works as a welcoming, deeply connected community.

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Written by Chris Featherman

We are indebted to Tracie, Karim, Chris, and the City of Cambridge for this Volunteer Spotlight.

Click here to learn more about the City of Cambridge Boards and Commissions and how to get involved.

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