Category: Story Update

Rock Steady Boxing’s rapid expansion helps them reach more Parksinson’s patients looking to fight back.

Around the time that we visited Rock Steady Boxing at their home gym in Indianapolis in 2015, they had 83 affiliate gyms in 23 states at 6 gyms internationally. Today, they have grown to include 415 gyms in 47 states with 7 gyms internationally, in cities as large as Chicago and San Francisco, and places as far as Oslo, Norway and Auckland, New Zealand.

Joyce Johnson, the Executive Director of Rock Steady Boxing, says new gyms pop up like mushrooms.

“When someone opens a new gym, they want to tell everyone,” Johnson said. “Others start to look at our website and decide they want to start a gym too.” Joyce emphasizes that Rock Steady doesn’t have a marketing department to help them expand. Instead, people find them. Even as a small non-profit organization, Rock Steady is contacted by physical therapists, gym owners, and people with Parkinson’s from all over the world to help them develop Rock Steady Boxing programs in their areas.

This is why their Small Forces video is so important to them.

“The video is such a perfect evergreen,” Johnson said. “I really value it and still show it to people. It is still relevant two years later,”

Now, over quadruple the size that it was two years ago, Rock Steady is planning to hold an international conference to bring all of its coaches together. Here, everyone will come together for a refresher training course on the Rock Steady program, and be among other coaches from across the country and the world.

We are thrilled by the growth that Rock Steady Boxing has had over the past few years and we are so excited to continue to be part of Rock Steady’s worldwide effort to help people with Parkinson’s fight back.

2016 was quite the busy year for The Honeycomb Project. Expanding their programs by 30% and creating new volunteer experiences for families to do together is hard work. We talked with Kristina Lowenstein, the Executive Director, to hear more about their growth, and how they’ve used their Small Forces video to help.

Small Forces: What is The Honeycomb Project up to these days?

Kristina Lowenstein: This year has been a really exciting time of growth for The Honeycomb Project. We provided opportunities to more than 2,100 volunteers, and what’s exciting for us is our families are coming from more neighborhoods than ever before. Families from 83% of Chicago area zip codes participated in our programs. Honeycomb is a place where people from the Chicagoland area can really come together to collaborate and work with others to address our city’s challenges. And that’s been really exciting for us. We hosted 63 projects in communities all over the city, addressing issues like homelessness and hunger, environment, education. With increasing concern around public safety, we partnered with the Chicago Police Department and the National Veteran’s Art Museum to address issues around public safety and reducing gun violence in Chicago, so that’s been a new initiative that we’ve been excited to build upon.

SF: You were invited to the White House last year. How did that come about, and what was the experience like?

KL: I was honored to receive a fellowship through Leadership Greater Chicago Each year, LGC immerses leaders from the private, nonprofit, and public sectors in the major socioeconomic issues facing the Greater Chicago area. I’m simply honored to be a part of the LGC program. As part of that fellowship, my cohorts and I went to the White House and it was a real honor to get an insider view of how our government is tackling issues at a national level and building policy. It was amazing.

It was a finalist in the Shorty Social Good Awards’ Public Health category

“The Boulevard: The Road to Health and Home,” the Small Forces story profiling the efforts of The Boulevard of Chicago to provide high-quality, cost-effective medical care, holistic support, and housing services to ill and injured homeless adults, was named a finalist in The Shorty Social Good Awards’ Public Health category.

Directly from our Shorty friends: “The Shorty Social Good Awards honor the social good initiatives brands, agencies, and nonprofits are taking to make our world a better place.”

While Small Forces didn’t bring home the win – congratulations to the victor, Texting vs. Drinking from MullenLowe and Safe Roads Alliance – we’re beyond honored that they’ve acknowledged the work Small Forces does to help bring these types of stories to light. And, more importantly, we’re thrilled for The Boulevard of Chicago’s work to get in front of more people.