July/August 2025 Issue

Page 4 July/August 2025 EAST COAST EQUESTRIAN From One of Millions to One in a Million Helping Hundreds Lezlie Hiner went from horse crazy barn rat to helping kids through the magic of horses.  Suzanne Bush Once upon a time Lezlie Hin- er was like millions of other youngsters. Crazy about horses, realizing that on more than one occasion, horses kept her out of trouble. Lots of kids grow out of their horse crazes. Others submit to the desire to center their lives around equines—training them, riding them, racing them. But for Hiner, there was more on her radar than being around horses. She was working at racetracks, traveling from state to state as a hotwalker and an assistant trainer. She was tired of always being on the road, and wanted to share the magic of horses with kids whose lives had been scarred by lack of resourc- es, by violence and by thwarted dreams. In her quest to turn this idea into fact, she embarked on a road strewn with obstacles that seemed to keep telling her to stop. It was 1994, and Hiner began creating a strategy to channel her love for horses, her degree in psychology and her entrepreneurial spirit into a program that could change kids’ lives. Simple, yes? “I was always interested in animal therapy,” she says, “but back then it wasn’t a thing. It was kind of like one of those pooh-pooh, she must be from California, ideas.” She thought about horses as magnets for kids, and about howmuch kids could learn from being around horses. “You know like any other horse stable, you get your barn rats,” she says. She imagined opening a stable where “it just so happened that our barn rats would be inner city kids. I wanted to try and implement that here, just to see if it would work.” AMajor Makeover for a His- toric Property Chamounix Drive in Philadel- phia’s Fairmount Park is a leafy, peaceful road that meanders past tennis courts, ball fields, man- sions and a pasture where several horses graze. Chamounix Stable, originally known as McCarthy Stables, once housed the Phila- delphia Mounted Police. It’s one of several historic stables in and around Fairmount Park. The Park Commission was planning to sell the stable. It was a moment in which Hiner’s plans and the Park’s objectives met. “They accepted my plan and I got the barn for just a dollar a year,” she says. Work to Ride leapt from Hin- er’s dream to reality. And in the 30-plus years since the program started, hundreds of kids have learned to love horses, care for them, ride them, compete on them and ride them into amazing futures. But it was not an easy trail for Hiner. Despite the bargain rent, the early days were tough and full of uncertainty. She recalls that even buying hay was fraught. “From ’94 to 2010 it was very difficult because we were always going hand-to-mouth. We just had no money coming in, and didn’t have enough to buy a big load of hay,” she says. Her strategy was time- and-gas-consuming. “I would go to New Holland and buy a small load on Monday, and then on Wednesday I would go to Wol- gemuth and buy a load. Then on Friday some money would come in and I would go up to Green Dragon and buy some hay.” As the real estate mantra goes, it’s all about location, location, location. And for Work to Ride, location was the key to attracting those inner city kids Hiner hoped would become barn rats as she was once. “I will say that we're in a very envious position in that we were able to rent this building for a dollar a year. You know that that saves a ton of money,” she says. “And then also the fact that we’re so close to the kids that we want to reach. The challenge in any kind of program is transportation. It’s a huge portion of what makes a program successful.” The program’s success led to more kids, which led to more support from donors, which led to more horses, which led to the need for better facilities. Today the an- cient stable is getting a makeover and what used to be the pasture is now a brand-new, state-of-the-art arena. It’s a dazzling answer to the question, “if you build it, will they come?” Hiner’s field of dreams hosts the 15 horses the Work to Ride kids feed, groom, ride and care for. Building a Sustainable Future Kareem Rosser joined the Work to Ride family when he was eight years old. The neighborhood where he lived in Philadelphia was called “the bottom,” more a war zone than a neighborhood. His brothers discovered Chamounix while riding their bikes in Fair- mount Park, and that was the beginning of his journey into a life filled with possibilities instead of despair. He went on to graduate from Colorado State University with a degree in economics. At Colorado State, he led the school’s polo team to a national polo cham- pionship. He’s a financial analyst, an author andVice President of the Board of Work to Ride. He has led the fundraising for the new facility. “We spent the last, whatever, six years or so fundraising—raising money both privately as well as publicly. We received significant support from the State and the City of Philadel- phia,” he says. Most of the money comes from donors, but they also get revenue from the programs they run, such as riding lessons. He says fundraising has been an education for everyone con- cerned, and they have had remark- able success. “It took us some time to really build up the trust and to put a plan together. We’ve had to educate people about what’s going on here and assuring them that their donations and investment will yield something significant for the community.” In the meantime, fundraising continues. “It has been an insane effort,” Rosser says, “when it’s your first time trying to raise sig- nificant sums. Some people can easily go out and raise $50,000 for something but trying to raise $15 million—that’s a whole dif- ferent ball game. We learned a lot throughout the process.” Hiner says she’s looking for- ward to opening the facility to equestrians who can bring their horses to Philadelphia and enjoy the huge, airy indoor arena—large enough to host indoor polo. She and Rosser see the opportunities to bring in more stakeholders for the program through events and horse shows. “We have to get program- ming back up,” Rosser says. “We have to have fundraising beyond just the capital improvements; we have to start funding our op- erations now.” He says that their annual operating budget nearly tripled over the past six years, from about $400,000 to close to $1.2 million. “We're thinking about how do we support some of the new ideas and programming that we are thinking about? This is all new for us. I joke and say we have high class problems now; we're not necessarily panhandling on the street begging for money to keep the lights on.” Rosser says that in addition to completing fund-raising for the barn renovation, they want to create an endowment to ensure the future of Work to Ride. “We were able to get more than 90 per cent of the money to fund both phase one (the arena) and phase two (the barn renovation), but we still have a funding gap of about $800,000 to fully fund both phases.” They’re planning an inaugural celebration of the new facility September 26 and 27. It will be a weekend of Kareem Rosser and Lezlie Hiner alongside the new pasture across the road from the stable. Photo by Suzanne Bush (Continued on page 6)