Back on My Feet
This entry has been selected as a finalist in the
Gamechangers: Change the Game for Women in Sport competition.
Back on My Feet is a non-profit organization that promotes the self-sufficiency of the homeless population by engaging them in running programs.
About You
Contact Information
Title
This field has not b
First name
Wylie
Last name
Belasik
Your job title
Program Director
Name of your organization
Back on My Feet
Organization type
Non-profit 501 (c) (3)
Annual budget/currency
$1.2 million
Mailing address
1520 Locust Street, Suite 804
Philadelphia, PA 19102
Telephone number
610-368-0995
F-a-x number
Country
United States
Website
Email address
Alternative email address
Location
Project Street Address
1520 Locust St. Suite 804
Project City
Philadelphia
Project Province/State
PA
Project Postal/Zip Code
19102
Project Country
United States
Your idea
Choose your sport: (check all that apply)
Running
If you chose "other" for Sport, please define in 1-2 words below
What approach does your initiative incorporate?
Capacity Building
Year the initiative began (yyyy)
2007
Paste your video code here:
If your project has a website, paste the web address here:
Plot your innovation within the discovery framework:
Barrier
Social stigmas and prohibitions
Insight
Embed sports with other activities
This field has not been completed.
Name Your Project
Back on My Feet
Describe Your Idea
Back on My Feet is a non-profit organization that promotes the self-sufficiency of the homeless population by engaging them in running programs.
Innovation
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
Back on My Feet is a non-profit organization that promotes the self-sufficiency of the homeless population by engaging them in running programs.
How many people does your innovation serve or plan to serve? Exactly who will benefit?
Back on My Feet directly serves the men and women currently living in emergency assistance housing (over 110 members), but indirectly benefits the entire surrounding community. The entire community is strengthened by our members increasing their self-esteem and daily productivity as well as breaking down negative stereotypes on our group runs four days a week.
Do you have any existing partnerships? If so, please list and describe.
We partner with existing shelters to form our running teams. Currently, we have six teams in Philadelphia with over 110 active residential members. We also have job training partnerships that our members can access in Philadelphia. Members can access job training assistance after two months in our program and exemplary attendance (above 90%).
In which sector do these partners work? (Check all that apply)
Citizen sector (non profits, NGOs) , Private sector , Public sector (government).
How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing?
The goal of Back on My Feet is to provide a supportive environment in which our members can strive for their goals and support their team-mates. By training and running together, personal bonds are created that enhance an individual's ability to trust and show leadership.
Impact
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact
Our program has over 110 residential members running 4 mornings a week in Philadelphia from six teams at emergency assistance facilities.
What does impact/success look like? Please list any tangible measures of the impact of your innovation
Success in Back on My Feet can be measured many ways, but below are the results of information that we track each month at team meetings:
Back on My Feet operates in six Philadelphia Emergency Housing Facilities and is expanding to Baltimore in March 2009
112 Residential Members (We are adding a minimum of 25 new members a month to the program with an overall retention rate of 89 %)
435 Volunteers
86 members have completed a competitive race
5 members have completed a half-marathon
2 members have completed a full-marathon
14 members have obtained housing
15 members have secured jobs
10 members have enrolled in job training programs (4 of our members recently started school in November)
33 members have attended one of the three required financial literacy classes
98% have stated their self-esteem has improved
55% have either quit or suppressed their smoking
98% have stated their daily productivity has increased
Is there a chance that your project could change policy (within an institution or government)?
Absolutely, Back on My Feet brings together a cosmopolitan group of individuals each morning on our runs that give the issue of homelessness a name and face in Philadelphia. Back on My Feet seeks to break down existing stereotypes and use running as a vehicle to help our members become more productive in their daily lives and form relationships with young professionals and other socio-economic groups who may not have otherwise interacted, but through the common element of sport.
Aside from financial sustainability, how do you plan to grow the initiative or expand your intended impact?
Our goal for 2009 is to add a new team every two months in Philadelphia and the surrounding area. Also, we are starting a Pilot Program in Baltimore in March of 2009 with two teams.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
Our funding is carefully spread across the following percentages so as to not become to reliant on any one source:
35% from individuals
25% from foundations
15% from corporations
20% from events
5% from Back on My Feet merchandise
Financing source
Annual budget
For 2009 our proposed budget is $1.2 million
Annual revenue generated
For 2009 our proposed revenue is $1.4 million
Number of staff (full-time, part-time, volunteers)
We currently have 7 full-time staff, 1 part-time staff member and over 450 volunteers.
What are the main barriers to financing your initiative, and how do you plan to address these barriers?
Our main barrier to financing is the relative youth of our organization. Many foundations and other sources of support are only available after three years. We have addressed this barrier by being transparent in our operating structure and tracking all elements of the successes of our program.
What are the major challenges with regards to partnerships?
The biggest challenge in potential partnerships is finding the best companies or organizations to partner with that will best serve the needs of our members. For example, we won't partner with a job training organization unless they offer services that will directly benefit large numbers of our active members. This can be challenging with the number of members we have and the amount of skills they both want to learn and how to implement what they know already.
The Story
What stage is your project?
Ongoing project .
What was the motivation or defining moment that led to create this innovation? Tell us the story.
Anne Mahlum would pass by a homeless shelter every morning on her daily run and began to develop a rapport with the men outside on the corner. What started out as waves and smiles from a distance became more intimate as they developed a comfort level with one another. And one morning a simple idea stopped her in her tracks....
With a call to the shelter and the astounding support from the community and the media, Philadelphia's first Homeless Running Club was well, up and running. The first run took place on Tuesday, July 3rd at 6 am...and now 19 months later, we are operating in six different shelters. It's pretty amazing.
Running is such a beautiful metaphor for life,” said Anne Mahlum, Founder and President of Back on My Feet. “Life is about choosing different roads and our program teaches the importance of choosing roads filled with opportunity, hope and happiness.”
Please tell us about the social innovator behind this initiative
Anne was born and raised in North Dakota. She attended St Cloud State and moved to the east coast to attend graduate school at American University. Anne then moved to Philadelphia to work as the Director of Outreach for a non-profit organization, the Committee of Seventy. However, Anne, a life-long runner, hadn't found her true passion until she had the idea for Back on My Feet over a year and a half ago and hasn't questioned her decision to make Back on My Feet her main mission in life.
(Optional) To be eligible for an additional prize, please select age range
27 or older
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Comments
Great to see an entry from my hometown!
I recently had a phone conversation with Anne and found her vision and intention, to affect those that have been marginalized by their various circumstances/situations, to be honorable and inspiring.
Qs: do you have specific programs that target the women who participate in the BOMF runs? Have you found that there are unique issues and/or needs for the homeless women in Philly?
Continued success to the BOMF team!
Kevin Carroll
Changemakers Featured Commentator
Sport for a Better World Competition
Hello Kevin-
This is Wylie Belasik, Program Director for Back on My Feet. Thanks so much for your kind words!
In answer to your question, we have one team that operates out of a women's only facility and one team that operates from a co-ed facility. There are definitely unique needs for the women as opposed to the men. Very early on we found that while competition (improving race times and personal bests) was crucial for the men to stay focused and involved in Back on My Feet, the social connectedness was far more important for the women.
For instance, the men's teams will do races once a month with great success, however the women's team started a book club that meets for discussion once a month and has a similar bonding experience that the races seem to have for the men.
These different approaches are elements of Back on My Feet that we have had the pleasure of experiencing and learning from over the past year and a half.
Thanks again Kevin!
Hello BOMF,
Glad to see your entry up on changemakers - Jeannette raves about your program and I am thinking that Kevin may have already pointed you toward Mel Young and his initiative, The Homeless World Cup: http://www.changemakers.net/node/3651 - we have partnered with Mel since the early days and I suspect you two have a lot of synergies/ opportunities for shared learning given the target population. There are leagues in the US that you might want to connect with as well, I am not sure if you have been in touch with them - here is their entry from the last changemakers competition:http://www.changemakers.net/node/2314
I feel like your initiative is super replicable in other cities - have you put together a toolkit of sorts that someone who might be interested could use as a guide for creating a BOMF franchise/ model in another city?
Keep up the great work, you are an inspiration to us all!
Best,
Ziba
Hello Ziba!
Thanks for your comment, we are so grateful to have Jeannette in our corner and we wouldn't have been able to build Back on My Feet to the point we have without her and Nike's support!
In just under a month, we'll be starting a Pilot Program in Baltimore, starting with two teams. We are extremely excited about the prospect of starting Back on My Feet programs in other cities. However, being a young organization, we are being very careful to make sure that our program remains sustainable and effective from both a personnel and financial standpoint. Baltimore will be a tremendous opportunity for Back on My Feet and we are eager to learn more and grow as we move forward.
Thanks again for your comments!
Hi Anne,
One other question - you dont mention much about the female members of your program, can you talk a bit about how your program serves their needs and whether you have any insights as to what their unique needs might be, if any?
Thanks
Ziba
In our program we currently have over 110 active members, however only 16 are women. This is due to several factors, but the biggest is that we are very selective about the facilities that we partner with in order to make sure Back on My Feet will be successful there and a good fit. We simply have not found as many women's facilities as men's facilities in Philadelphia. Also, at women's facilities, in order to run at 5:30 in the morning Back on My Feet is responsible to provide child-care which can be logistically tricky with coordinating necessary paperwork and facility clearance for our folks to come in and babysit for the women with children.
Also, a difference in the women's program are the social needs. Our women value the social connectedness more than the competitive nature of Back on My Feet which is different from the men. A big motivator for the men is a success of achieving a personal best or new distance. However, for the women, being a part of a supportive team environment is absolutely paramount. This isn't to say that the women don't push themselves on the runs because they certainly do, but the team attitude is noticeably different from our other men's teams. Our women's team has had great success with replacing their monthly races with the meeting of their book club. The book club creates a safe environment for the women to share life experiences and stories with their Back on My Feet team-mates.
Please let me know if I can answer any other questions for you!
Hi Anne:
I agree with Ziba who stated above that your program is very replicable and is a prototype that should be brought to other cities in the US where there are big homeless assistance progams and family shelters and supportive housing.
Have you thought about applying for any Federal assistance from let's say the US Housing and Urban Development homeless assistance grant programs?
And do you have a specific program geared to young women,what about the younger children in homeless families- teens and mid-school aged?
Hello Liz!
We are very excited about the prospect of starting Back on My Feet programs in cities around the country, however we stay away from the term "replicate" because we feel that it has the potential to quell the unique flair that each of our six Philadelphia teams have. Each team follows the same core principles of Back on My Feet (inclusion, inspiration and fostering a supportive team environment), however the attitude and ownership that our members take of their teams creates beautiful variations on a common theme. Next month we will be launching a Pilot Program in Baltimore with two teams!
Currently, we have not applied for Federal assistance because of the current economic situation and we very much value our own independence and being able to operate Back on My Feet in the way that we have seen to be successful. We have been very careful to spread our funding asks over a network of individuals, corporations, foundations and our own events in order to remain healthy should one of those areas suffer.
We currently have one all women's team, one that is co-ed and are in the process of talks with what would be our first youth program (12-18 year olds). We are very keen on starting this program because it offers the chance to start healthy activity habits at a much earlier age and hopefully work with the current facility to provide these youths with important life skills to move forward and achieve their goals.
Hi Anne:
I agree with Ziba who stated above that your program is very replicable and is a prototype that should be brought to other cities in the US where there are big homeless assistance progams and family shelters and supportive housing.
Have you thought about applying for any Federal assistance from let's say the US Housing and Urban Development homeless assistance grant programs?
And do you have a specific program geared to young women,what about the younger children in homeless families- teens and mid-school aged?
Hello Wylie + the BOMF team!
It's great to see the convos that quickly generated about your work - very cool!
It's evident from the flurry of responses/queries to your entry, that there's no lack of opportunities for your initiative. The key thing that I heard Anne say in our convo was BOMF's focus is on doing the Philly program extremely well and to better understand the impact that BOMF is having on the participants via an ongoing university study that will provide measurable outcomes of your efforts. I think having that information will allow you to share the best practices of BOMF with other interested locales around the US and beyond.
Also, Ziba is absolutely right that you should connect with Mel Young with the Homeless World Cup - www.homelessworldcup.org - to glean from their 6 year's worth of work using soccer as a catalyst for the global homeless community.
All great stuff! Keep your initiative moving...it's making a difference!
Kevin Carroll
Changemakers Featured Commentator
Sport for a Better World Competition
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