This one-of-a-kind West Philly program helps transform kids’ lives. With horses.
The Work to Ride program, based at the Chamounix Equestrian Center in Fairmount Park, hosts a polo team that has won a national championship. It's looking at a $13 million expansion.
Alyssa Perren’s road to Harvard University ran through a horse barn in Fairmount Park. So did Mo Gravesande’s path to the University of North Texas, Kareem Rosser’s to Colorado State University, and Shariah Harris’ to Cornell University.
That’s why Lezlie Hiner on a sweltering Saturday in July directed traffic as a handful of Philadelphia teenagers mucked stalls, groomed and exercised horses, and prepped for an upcoming polo match. The group had arrived early, and they would be there all day. In Hiner’s world, you show up on time, and you don’t cut corners.
For nearly 30 years, this has been Hiner’s life — the secret sauce of Work to Ride, a nonprofit that uses horses as a means to open up doors for young people from underserved backgrounds. Twenty students participate in the full-time program, exchanging barn chores for the opportunity to learn horsemanship and play polo at no cost to their families; more students participate in discovery days and a summer camp.
That sounds simple, but for the young people whose lives it has transformed, Work to Ride — the only program of its kind in the country — is profound.
“For me, Work to Ride was always a getaway,” said Perren, who graduated from Paul Robeson High School in June and will head to Harvard next month. “It made me feel special, like I was learning something that most people don’t know.”
Tajee McLaughlin, a 14-year-old from West Philly, expects horses to take him places, too.
“There’s just a thrill you get from riding, feeling the wind on your face,” said McLaughlin, a student at West Catholic High School. “It’s not like anything else.”
McLaughlin recently spent a week on a borrowed horse learning the finer points of fox hunting from Olympians; Hiner’s relationships in the horse community made that happen.
On a break in the barn, McLaughlin and Jordyn Floyd, 12, said they learned a great deal about hard work in the barn, and that the meaning of the opportunities weren’t lost on them.
“Polo is not really a Black sport,” McLaughlin said.
“So we have to represent our city, our community,” Floyd said.
“We show them how we are,” McLaughlin said. “We show them who we are.”
‘It’s taken 30 years’
Hiner, who grew up “all over” but went to high school in New Jersey, worked in sales for her father’s company, but the job didn’t inspire her.
“I got fired for insubordination — surprise, surprise,” Hiner said, laughing. “It was a gift, because it kind of forced me to take my ideas and write a business plan.”
She rode and loved horses growing up, and thought it would be interesting to develop a program teaching Philadelphia kids about horses.
Hiner loved the Philadelphia horse community, but knew as a white woman that it wasn’t often accessible to young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, to youth of color.
“It’s usually middle- or upper-income kids, kids who know about lessons and camp, kids whose parents can give them that,” she said.
So what if she scraped together funding and provided it? “I wanted to deliberately reach out to underserved neighborhoods to give kids that experience and that opportunity.”
People were interested, and the Chamounix Equestrian Center, the city-owned stables in West Philadelphia, was vacant. In 1994, Hiner won a bid to create Work to Ride. The initial goal was just to offer riding lessons, but then Hiner started playing polo herself, and her first group of kids wanted to try it, too.
Writing that first modest business plan, did Hiner ever envision a future that encompassed an all-Black national championship polo team, Work to Ride kids being featured in documentaries, and an international Ralph Lauren ad campaign, an annual Philadelphia Polo Classic that draws thousands of people to Fairmount Park, and now a $13 million capital campaign and expansion that will see the organization double its reach?
“Heck, no,” she said. “I would say it’s snowballed, but it’s taken 30 years.”
When Work to Ride took over Chamounix, the stables were in disrepair; over the years, it’s completed small repairs piecemeal, as its budget allowed. But now, the organization is thinking big — a new, 35,000-square foot indoor riding facility, plus expanding and upgrading existing pastures. In the past, Work to Ride had paid the city $1 annually to use the facility; the upgrades mean it will get a longer-term lease.
The nonprofit operates on an annual budget of about $450,000, which is expected to grow dramatically when the new facility opens.
With construction going on, the program is currently operating out of borrowed space, the Northwestern Stables in Chestnut Hill. But the second annual Philadelphia Polo Classic will still happen in September in Fairmount Park, and Hiner expects to be fully back at Chamounix next summer.
In the meantime, the organization has raised about $10 million of the $13 million it needs.
‘We expect a lot from them’
Hiner loves the Work to Ride students, but she has high standards for them, and not just about washing the saddle pads and making sure the horses’ hay nets are stuffed.
“It’s very structured, and we’re clear about our guidelines — you’re expected to go to school, you’re expected to be timely,” said Hiner. “I realize that the kids have a lot of hurdles, but we expect a lot from them.”
After running Work to Ride for three decades, Hiner knows every student won’t go to college, or even stick with polo or horses. But they will know a wider world.
That thrills Rosalind Harley. Her 16-year-old, Marc-Anthony, has been a Work to Ride kid since he was 9. Her son always loved animals, and she jumped at the chance to enroll him in the program when she discovered it.
It’s a big commitment, Harley said. “When other kids are out doing whatever, he’s at the barn. Somedays, he’s there seven days a week. But it teaches them work ethic, being responsible, taking care of the animals. It’s a huge responsibility.”
Marc-Anthony, who lives in South Philadelphia and attends a cyber charter school, has his sights set on becoming a zoologist and playing polo in college. And now that Perren and Gravesande have graduated from Work to Ride, he’s the program veteran, and suddenly stepping up in a way Hiner hadn’t seen before, she said.
“I’m just happy to play,” Marc-Anthony said.
The Work to Ride crew made it to the national interscholastic polo championship last year, but the loss of Perren and Gravesande could mean a rebuilding season. The titles are nice, Hiner said, but they’re not the point.
“The joy of the program is being able to take the kids out of their six-block radius and be able to introduce them to opportunities and a lifestyle that they maybe only ever saw on TV, to show them it’s achievable,” Hiner said.