May 1, 2008 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Photograph by Dario Mescia
Every morning last spring, while training for a marathon, Anne Mahlum would jog past a group of homeless men who sat outside the Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission, in Philadelphia. She smiled and waved at first, then as she got to know them, she would stop to chat for a few minutes.
But as Ms. Mahlum continued her running routine, she says, she started to feel like she was turning her back on the men.
“Here I am moving my life forward in every way possible — physically, emotionally, mentally — and I’m leaving them on this corner,” says Ms. Mahlum, a marketing consultant. “So in my head I’m thinking, I can work this out. I’m going to start a running club for these guys.”
Back on My Feet, the group Ms. Mahlum founded last July, organizes homeless people in Philadelphia into running teams and provides them with shoes and workout clothes. It requires participants to have stayed sober and in a shelter for at least 30 days. The group offers $500 in housing assistance and $1,000 scholarships as rewards that members can earn by participating in the jogs and by demonstrating leadership qualities and teamwork.
“Members are realizing how much they’re capable of and how important it is to have positive people in your life,” Ms. Mahlum says. “To hear words like ‘I’m proud of you, you’re doing really great,’ it goes a really long way.”
The young organization, which is filing for charity status with the Internal Revenue Service, has already received attention on CNN and ABC World News Tonight and has raised $200,000. The charity may soon expand to Washington and also create a running group for homeless adolescents.
Ms. Mahlum says that running melts away any distinctions between participants from the shelters and other runners: “When we’re running in the morning, we have black, white, old, young — it doesn’t really matter. You can’t tell who’s homeless. All you can tell is who’s the fastest.”
Here, Ms. Mahlum leads a group on a run in Philadelphia.
