Esperanza international

In 2002, I traveled to Santo Domingo in the Domincan Republic with writer Florangela Davila to do a story on former major league baseball player Dave Valle, and his Esperanza International.  It was while playing winter ball in the Dominican that Valle saw the need for a different type of charity.  Not simply the dissemination of money, but he knowledge and skill that could instill power in the individual to lift themselves from poverty.

The story was multi-faceted in that there was Esperanza’s economic initiatives, which frequently resulted in individuals learning to create their own businesses.   But also, the phenomenon of baseball in the Caribbean in which so much of its youth placed its hopes.

We traveled with Valle through the country’s largest city, Santo Domingo, and into the Presidential Palace, and through some of that country’s poorest towns, near San Pedro, to see both the conditions that motivated Valle to begin his charity, and the result that grew from it.   From the children playing a unique game of baseball using juice can lids, to baseball fields carved from graze land.  We followed as he lobbied the head of US A.I.D. in the Caribbean.

These pictures represent the magazine’s first edit, and the first image was the magazine’s cover.