MaryKay Mullally, a Jamaican born woman whose Self-Expression and Leadership Program of training women to run marathons and half-marathons led her to form the “Step Up For Life” organization, was recently interviewed by the Jamaica Gleaner, a leading Jamaican newspaper. Mullally talked about being honored by ABC News and Prevention Magazine as one of five winners of their Picture of Health contest, which gave the award to women making an inspiring difference in the health of other women.

MaryKay Mullally — Making a Difference

by Barbara Nelson

Tired of running a software development team in California, Jamaican-born MaryKay Mullally became involved in self-development seminars. One of her courses involved developing a half-marathon-training group. The result? “I ran my first marathon in January 2002, two months before turning 41,” the now vibrant 47-year old mother of two, said.

“It was one of the most challenging yet exhilarating things I’ve ever done. I had to dig deep physically and mentally to keep going when my muscles were burning and the voices in my head said I wasn’t going to make it. It required that I be present in each moment, focus on the finish line and just take the next step. Completing that marathon made me feel like I could do anything.”

twists and turns

She was one of five women featured in the June 2008 issue of Prevention magazine, vying for the top prize in the second annual Prevention/ABC News Now Picture of Health contest. The women were selected because they showed that “life does get better after 40, and that you can find your healthy path no matter how many twists and turns it takes to get there.”

This charming woman, who attended St. Andrew High School in Jamaica as a young girl, ran two more marathons in 2003 before creating Step Up For Life in August 2004. Step Up For Life was initially launched as a project in the Self Expression and Leadership Program, one of the core programs of Landmark Education. This program gives people an opportunity to express themselves fully, make a difference in their community and have other people people participate.

“I wanted to empower women with this program by helping them to do something they would never have done and never thought they could do so they could take that into other areas of their lives and know they could do anything by taking one step at a time with the support of other women just like themselves. I wanted women to experience the freedom I felt when I ran and have a tool they could use to reclaim their health. I had 50 people sign up and had to turn people away,” she said.

experience

Of the original 50 women, 40 made it to the starting line at the inaugural Nike Women’s Half Marathon in San Francisco and all finished. For many it was the most empowering experience of their lives.

In January of 2005 MaryKay launched Step Up as a business, running three sessions per year to train for local San Diego Half marathons. Just fewer than 1000 women have participated to date.

“I have now expanded my business into a wellness coaching practice and have helped hundreds of men and women to lose weight and reclaim their health and wellbeing. So my focus is more on this aspect of my business,” she explained. MaryKay also coaches people via the phone over a period and helps them to achieve their individual health, weight or fitness goals.

Since being profiled by Prevention magazine and ABC News, she has been contacted by scores of people including high school friends with whom she’d lost touch.

dream

“One phone call I will never forget,” MaryKay said, “came from a woman in Texas on the morning the competition was announced on ABC’s Good Morning America. She told me that she weighed 300lbs and had tried every diet in the book and had failed miserably. She said she hated herself and the night before had gone to bed hopeless and resigned. That morning she turned the TV on to the segment and for the first time in months she had hope through my story. At that point she immediately went to her computer, cast her vote for me, looked me up on Google and called me. When I hung up realizing that my dream to impact millions of people was already being fulfilled, it was all I could do to not breakdown and cry.”

ABC News declared all five finalists winners and MaryKay donated her winning cheque of US$5,000 to NEADS (Dogs For Deaf and Disabled Americans), of Princeton, MA. The organization trains rescued dogs to assist persons who are deaf or physically disabled in leading more independent lives. To learn more about MaryKay’s wellness program visit www.stepupforlife.com

To see the story in its original form, visit the Jamaica Gleaner website.

Chicago resident Sean Parnell is a kind of local celebrity–He is well known for his Chicago Bar Project, a website that reviews practically every notable bar in Chicago. Perhaps less well known is Parnell’s work to combat urban blight. While taking the Landmark Education Self Expression and Leadership class, Parnell decided to take on the problem of abandoned buildings and vacant lots in the city’s poorer neighborhoods that go beyond being an eyesore to being an active danger and impediment to the rejuvenation of the city. The Chicagoist, a leading local website, interviewed Parnell about both the bar project and the Abandoned Lot Project. Excerpts of the interview about the abandoned lot project appear here. 

“In the self expression and leadership program you embark on a project of your own choosing, your own design. They have a couple criteria about it – your project goes for three months and there needs to be some measureable result, to hold yourself accountable for the things you’ve done. And in the leadership component is getting others involved. And also at certain times in the project stepping away and letting others step up, to see if they can do more than just something by yourself. Because if you’re really going to have an impact in your community and beyond, those are the sort of things you should do. Is have others involved, and sometimes lead and sometimes follow.”

I started the Abandoned Lot project out of my frustration and shame that great parts of a great city are living in third-world conditions. I love Chicago and I have yet to find a place I’d rather live. But when you take a drive down to the south side and the west side, Austin, Lawndale, East and West Garfield Park, go down south to Englewood, Back of the Yards, Gresham – they look like there’s been a war. There’s bombed-out homes, a lot of them have been torn down, thanks to the city’s Fast Track demolition program, which has its pros and cons.

But I’ve been very frustrated and ashamed about how since the riots in the sixties, huge swaths of the south and west side have lain in waste. Abandoned buildings mostly on the west side, some vacant lots, which is kind of the reverse of the south side, where you do have a number of abandoned buildings but you have an incredible number of vacant lots. And if you think about the economic conditions down there, there are very few grocery stores, very few restaurants, a handful of bars and these are not the fun places on the north side – these are all nasty, hole-in-the-wall bad places, except for a handful of blues bars that offer something more than just alcoholism.

Anyhow, I wanted to do something that had a positive impact at the community level – never done a community project, and I thought, “well, what am I good at?” I just explained what I was interested in, but how could I apply that? Well, I created the Chicago Bar Project and that’s given a lot of exposure to bars in a very positive way. What if [I] take it in the opposite direction and expose some of the things that are really bad about the city? That these abandoned buildings would be allowed to lay vacant for sometimes 20, 30, 40 years? Because abandoned buildings are magnets for drug activity, and fires, and all kinds of illegal activity – and they’re just dangerous. Staircases can collapse, floors can collapse, there’s rats in there. They’re magnets for bad things.

And think about, what if you owned a property next to an abandoned building that sits vacant for 20 years? What’s that going to do to your property value? That can affect the property value of the whole neighborhood if it’s an especially bad one. So I was hoping to enact some positive change, and try to get some of these places dealt with. I had to pick five to fit within the scope, but I thought “what am I going to be able to do in three months, that will have an impact?”

There is lot more to this interview with Parnell, both about the Abandoned Lot project and other topics. Go to the Chicagoist to read this interview in its entirety.

When Claudia Beltran tutored for the East Village Youth Program (EVYP) a couple of years ago, she was impressed by the ambition of the young people she worked with. The EVYP provides tutoring and mentoring youths in Chicago, with the mission of encourage and prepare primarily low-income, Latino youth for a college education. She worked with 5th graders who were already clear about their profession and determined to succeed.

When she took Landmark Education’s Self-Expression and Leadership Program, creating a new way to empower the potential she saw in youths working with the EVYP was a natural fit for her.

“I’m passionate about latinos being productive in the world,” Beltran says.

So she created “Stepping Into Your Shoes”, a project which allowed 30 high school sophomores and juniors to go on a job shadowing day with a professional of their choice. Beltran partnered with e-hispanics.com, a leading Chicago website for the hispanic community, to find a committed group of professionals to support the students. Then she created an April 11th event day where each student would spend 2-4 hours finding out about and actually working in a profession that interested in. For instance, a student that went to a press firm got to write a real press release.

Katherine Moone, EVYP’s program director, said that feedback from the youths was fantastic. In fact, she’s working to make job shadowing events part of EVYP’s regular curriculum. For more information or to get involved with EVYP, go to www.evyp.org.

When Effie Brunson took Landmark Education’s Self-Expression and Leadership Program last year, she became inspired to both make solar power more widely available in her home state of Texas, and help low-income families reduce their energy costs. She took on both of these goals with the creation of Rays of Hope, which works with other notable local organizations to provide and install solar photovoltaic systems on houses that are either being built or retrofitted for low-income families in Austin.

Rays of Hope is working to provide five homes with these solar PV panels this year, through funding from state and local organizations such as solar panel manufacturers and other members of the business community. Earlier this year, Rays of Hope was written about by the Texas Solar Energy Society, whose article appears below.

A Chance to Make a Difference

As fuel costs continue to rise and people become increasingly aware of the relationship between climate change and emissions associated with traditional energy generation, the demand for cleaner resources is growing. Solar power systems can meet this demand by providing clean energy with no emissions. Austin Energy’s current strategic plan includes a goal of delivering 30% of the energy they provide from renewable resources by 2020 with 100 megawatts of that renewable capacity from solar power. We’d like to help Austin Energy achieve that goal.

Rays of Hope is committed to helping low-income homeowners with relief from high utility bills by providing solar PV systems to meet the energy needs of these households. The project will purchase solar electric equipment and coordinate the installation of that equipment by hand-on workshops open to the public. Rays of Hope eliminates the initial investment costs for these residents, enabling them to positively impact the environment and significantly reduce what is often their 2nd highest monthly expense.

The pilot installation will take place March 13 and 14 at 6912 Villita Avenida in Austin, on a house being constructed by American YouthWorks Casa Verde Builders. Once complete, the house will be put on the open market to be sold as affordable housing.  American YouthWorks is an organization which gives at risk youth a second chance through job training programs and education in their charter school. By donating to Rays of Hope, you will be helping to purchase a solar array for a low-income family, giving them financial self-sufficiency and exposure to solar technology.

To contribute to Rays of Hope or otherwise get involved, go to the Rays of Hope website.

My name is Kathy Peterson. Through taking Landmark Education’s Self Expression and Leadership Program, I started a grass roots project in December 2007. The project is at my church, to plant seeds of “eco-justice”, that is, taking care of our earth, and describe here that project about the environment.

The first goal of the project was to introduce re-usable shopping bags. So what’s the deal about reusable shopping bags? If each family uses 10 bags per week, at about 4 ounces, or about 50 pound per year, re-using shopping bags will benefit the planet. I have used mine for 12 years, which has saved about 600 pounds of plastic, and reduced landfill. From several websites I discovered that 100 billion plastic bags are used annually in the US, and only 5.2 percent of those are recovered for recycling.

Here’s how the project is organized: the quilting and other women’s groups are engaged in sewing reusable cloth bags, according to a simple pattern. We will be sewing bags for several months. The youth program will design a logo for the bags and will be at the same time learning a lesson on the environment. They will sell the bags for a minimal amount and have the money available for mission work. When people purchase the bags, they will also be given a list of other ways to “caretake the earth.” When people shop with the bags, other shoppers will notice, comment and be inspired to “caretake the earth.” Children who study the environmental lesson will be inspired to take care of our earth in future ways that we are not yet aware of.

The project has had an enthusiastic response. The project is just starting, but already there have been results. There is goodwill between the adults who are making the bags and the youth who will benefit from the sale. The youths are able to use their creativity in designing the logo and in advertising the bags. The “sewers” are also using their creativity.

One of the young adult members was encouraged to seek ways to begin a recycling program at the church. The adult education program has planned to show Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” as part of the adult education program, with a follow up discussion about actions that the congregation can take.

All in all, we are embarking on a journey to be in service to the planet we all share, and that sustains us each day of our lives. In my stand for our planet, I encourage everyone of you reading this to do what you can to “caretake the earth”. Begin your journey today, with one step: Start by a purchase of your own re-usable shopping bags.