Northbrook teen's bat mitzvah project now an ongoing effort to improve people's lives

Home, Ellie Footlik believes, is where memories and traditions are created.

The 16-year-old Northbrook resident and junior at Rochelle Zell Jewish High School is more than four years into helping provide that for people with her own enterprise, Room By Room.

Partnering with Humble Design - a national nonprofit that designs and furnishes interiors for veterans, seniors and families emerging from homelessness in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, San Diego and Seattle - Footlik creates “room kits” of artwork and donated or purchased items based on Humble Design's wish lists.

Making quarterly deliveries to Humble Design's Chicago warehouse, 431 W. Pershing Road, in the Bridgeport neighborhood, Footlik gathers and assembles around 20 individually packaged kits for bedrooms, kitchens and bathrooms, plus baking and cleaning kits.

She'll also include furniture and other household items as she runs across them or neighbors and businesses donate them.

“Whatever people are willing to give, we are giving,” Footlik said. “For me, home has always been super-important. It's always been a place where I could feel safe. Whether I have a good day or a bad day I always need somewhere to sleep and somewhere just to return to.

“We help people not just have a place to go, but have it be a cozy place, a place where they'd want to spend time.”

Room By Room began when Footlik was 12 and seeking a worthy bat mitzvah project. Canvassing places in her wheelhouse where she could make a difference - using art, creating that feeling of home, hands-on volunteering - Humble Design's mission stood out.

At first her parents, Janet and Rob, would drive Ellie to Bridgeport with her younger sister, Noa, and maybe some friends. Eventually they would drop her off and pick her back up hours later.

Footlik then ventured into making digital artwork for children's rooms “because they needed that,” she said.

Her creativity, intuition and initiative is not lost on the people at Humble Design.

“One beautiful contribution that she has made is providing us with artwork and posters that are more reflective of the majority of our clientele,” said Jazmine Stephens, director of the Chicago location and one of several local Humble Design leaders predated by Footlik's association with the charity.

“We get wonderful donations from people in the community, but a lot of the artwork is not reflective of the people that we're serving,” Stephens said. “A lot of people love it, but she's been providing artwork that people can walk in and see themselves in.”

The COVID-19 pandemic ended on-site volunteering, “but there was more need than ever to make a house a home,” Footlik said.

She shifted to the current Room By Room model, which has the Footliks' garage and basement occupied with donated furniture and the makings of bathroom kits: shower curtains and liners, curtain rings, toothbrush holders, cups, towels, trash cans, and toiletries.

“Essential items that will make the space feel safe, warm and permanent,” she said.

Footlik would use her babysitting earnings to buy items on Humble Design's wish list. She'd slip notes about her mission under neighbors' doors, check garage and estate sales, get word-of-mouth going.

“People were really responsive in the community, and they've been a big help,” she said.

Collecting, buying, sorting, packing, Footlik accepts help but does most of it herself, more after she got her driver's license. She also plays tennis for Rochelle Zell in the fall, and now is out for track.

“She's someone who gets more done in a day than I do in a weekend,” said Janet Footlik.

“I'm happy that she's giving back and doing it in a way where she's consistent and being reliable to Humble Design, and has a balance with her rigorous course load, and being social, too. She has to be able to do a lot of things at one time, and I'm happy that she can do it without letting anyone down, including herself.”

Joining Humble Design on “Deco Days” - the Chicago branch decorates about three spaces a week, 156 a year, Stephens said - Footlik has seen people cry at what they've received.

They'll send photos of their favorite poster. A boy surprised to find a new microwave oven in his kitchen - courtesy of Abt - happily announced he'd help make dinner.

“She's been a really terrific ambassador for us in her local community as well as just making life so much easier for us operationally in what she's been providing,” Stephens said.

According to Humble Design, nationally less than 1% of people in the nearly 2,700 homes it's treated since 2009 return to homelessness.

That's Footlik's favorite statistic.

“The kind of impact we've had has been able to transform people's lives. It gives them a place to go,” she said.