No one travels to the Dominican Republic in August. No one except our special group of “missionaries”.  It’s outrageously hot and excessively humid. The streets are especially filthy, littered with all kinds of garbage which smells extra pungent in this oppressive tropical heat. Our group consists of 11 teenagers and adults bouncing around in a rickety bus without shock absorbers while navigating the rutted dirt roads. There is NO air conditioning. The temperature is 102 degrees with 85% humidity. Did I already mention that there was NO air conditioning? All of the bus windows are open so the dust and dirt kicked up from the road is flying throughout the bus. My crowning glory of long, lustrous, red hair has become filthy, frizzed, unmanageable brillo. “Will I ever have normal hair again?” I panic. To distract myself I munch on one of the power bars brought from Manhattan so that I would have something to eat during our daily 10-12 hour excursions to reach the most impoverished towns throughout this island country. This is the sixth summer that my family is making this challenging trip and sometimes when the going gets tough I ponder “Why am I still doing this?” Then I look around the bus and I spot the reason - my teenage son, Brett, who is actually the leader of our small troop. Brett is in fact the founder and president of what has become a nationally recognized not-for-profit charity called “Homerun Hopefuls”.  Throughout the year, Brett recruits young teens around the country to help stage charitable drives to collect all kinds of baseball equipment, uniforms, gear, cleats and sneakers for the most impoverished boys in the Dominican Republic.  I feel overwhelmed by pride as I watch Brett supervise the fourteen and fifteen year olds who have come along on this trip to voluntarily work on our mission to see firsthand what it’s like to be a philanthropist in a 3rd world country. Although Brett is fully in charge, I still feel that it is my responsibility as “the attending mother” to safeguard the well-being of the other teens along with us.  And so I am constantly busy insisting the boys use Purell to sanitize their hands, sunscreen to prevent serious burning from the scorching sun, making sure they all have plenty of bottled drinking water, and handing out snacks and power bars throughout the day. I also serve as resident photographer snapping away to capture all the good “photo moments” of our group. So although I am known to complain a lot about the uncomfortable conditions throughout our week in the Dominican, in reality I love my job, because I’m working for my son and he, in turn, is actually happy to have me along. How many parents of a teenager can say that? So how did this charity get its start? Christmas 2001, my husband Richard, Brett and I are vacationing at a lovely beach resort in the tourist area of the Dominican Republic known as Punta Cana.  Brett was 15 years old and a sophomore in high school at that time. He was always a diligent student but the more important aspect of his youth had to do with his self-image as a baseball player. His world revolved around his travel baseball team “The Gothams” in the Bronx, comprised mostly of outstanding young Dominican athletes from the Hispanic community of Washington Heights. One of the very few “white boys” on this team, Brett gained the respect of the other players with his intense work ethic and passion for the sport¬–not to mention his ability to speak fluent Spanish. So when he told his teammates that he would be visiting the DR, they made him promise to take time out to play ball with local kids in a pick up game. In the Dominican Republic, baseball is as important as religion to the mass population. So at our resort, Brett immediately finds a ball playing waiter who volunteers to take him to his home town for a game the next day. Being a mom, and knowing that the Dominican Republic is not a particularly safe country (there are armed guards stationed at every entrance point to our resort) I am relieved when my husband agrees to go along with Brett and the waiter. The next day, they all leave early in the morning on a two hour excursion to a town called “La Romana”. They return by late afternoon. Walking slowly over to my beach chair with a strained, somber expression on his face, Brett announces “I now know what I have to do in my life”.  “I really want to help the children of the Dominican Republic. I’m going to go back home and set up some drives at the private schools to get kids there to donate baseball equipment and uniforms for the kids here who have absolutely NOTHING”.  My husband confirmed that both he and Brett were actually quite moved by the experience of the day. The public bus they rode on was jammed with extremely poor people, but it was the sights along the way that were especially disturbing.  Brett viewed families living in one room run-down shacks of rusting corrugated metal and rotting wood. There was no electricity, no plumbing, no functioning bathrooms. Malnourished, semi-naked barefoot children were everywhere. Little girls no older than 6 years old were taking care of baby siblings. Starving dogs, pigs, goats and chickens roamed the dirt roads searching for food among the refuse. Cooking was done on outdoor fires. Slaughtered beef was hanging in makeshift stalls covered with flies. Upon reaching the town of La Romana, the waiter located a few boys to get a group together so that they could play some ball in an empty lot. And the next sight was what really got to Brett. A group of skinny enthusiastic boys came running to the lot with their “baseball equipment” consisting of empty milk containers fashioned into baseball mitts, various sized tree branches utilized as bats and taped stones as baseballs.  Assorted garbage was designated as bases to form a baseball diamond. That game will be forever emblazoned in my son’s memory. This was the humble beginning of Brett’s charity “Homerun Hopefuls”.  Upon returning to Manhattan, I knew that it would really be up to me to help him get this project off the ground.  I showed Brett how I would conduct a production meeting to launch a show (since I am a television producer) so that he would take this endeavor seriously and set up realistic goals that would be attainable. All of our “meetings” about Homerun Hopefuls were formal sit-down encounters¬–not just chit chat over the dinner table. We would make a “To Do” list of our goals and then determine a specific course of action to achieve each one. That first year we targeted 4 private schools in the Manhattan area where we had some personal connections. I then had Brett write a formal letter to the Dean of each school asking if he could have 5 minutes at one of their school assemblies to make a community service pitch. To our delight, the Deans were quite receptive and Brett’s public speaking career was launched. I went with him to all of the schools and watched him confidently take the stage and passionately talk about his encounter with real poverty.  He asked the assembled students to take the time and bring in their used sneakers, baseball gloves, bats, balls and old uniforms and donate them to “Homerun Hopefuls” because it was time for “kids to help other kids of a different culture”.  By May of that first year we had filled up a small storage locker with equipment and my husband and I purchased a set of new uniforms to outfit an entire team as our own personal contribution. “How can we be sure that what we’ve collected will get into the hands of Dominican kids who really need it?” asks Brett at one of our meetings. Great question! At first I had absolutely no idea how to figure this out, but then I was seized by a wonderful inspiration. Why not contact the Dominican Consulate in New York and ask if they’ll help in our quest. Upon calling the Consulate, I discovered that they had a specific person, Luis Ducasse, who served as the Public Relations Director of Sports.  Luis was quick to invite us over for a meeting. I wish I could describe the puzzled expression on Luis’ face during that first encounter. Since Luis wasn’t that comfortable speaking English, Brett spoke for both he and I in Spanish, complete with Dominican colloquial expressions. I just know that deep down Luis couldn’t figure out why this privileged white boy wanted so desperately to help the youth of his country. But by the end of this session, Luis was so taken by Brett’s idealism that he insisted that he would personally take us back to the Dominican Republic to supervise the dissemination of equipment to the poorest of communities. Luis wanted Brett to be able to see firsthand the rewards of his actions. He also arranged for the consulate to ship down the equipment and take care of customs (which we truly hadn’t thought about). So in August of 2002 Brett, Richie and I flew down to Santo Domingo with Luis and his wife. That first summer trip with “Homerun Hopefuls” will forever live in my heart for I had no idea what to anticipate. True to his promise, Luis arranged for us to go to 5 different villages in various parts of the country to give the equipment to legitimate baseball leagues.  “This way”, Luis explained, “more kids will get to use the equipment we are giving them.” When we drove to the first village, I expected to see about 10 boys waiting for us…instead about 150 boys came out to surrounded the van we had rented. I can now admit that I was actually a little fearful exiting the vehicle with the swarms of barely clothed boys pulling at us. Luis immediately established “order” and we walked with the equipment boxes to the center of their ball field. There to greet us was the man who headed this particular baseball league along with the mayor of the village who came to thank us personally. All the boys became quiet and respectful as speeches were made by community leaders. Then it was Brett’s turn to speak. He explained to the assembled group that he was just like all of them in his love of baseball. He told them how joyous he was to be fortunate enough to enable them to play the game that’s their national past time with proper equipment. Brett told them that he had their same big dreams of growing up to be the next great Major League ball player like Alex Rodriguez or Jose Reyes.  “The reality is, however, that very few of us will actually make it as a major league ball player and so we need to have a backup plan.  We must all stay in school so that we can have an alternative to baseball if our big dreams don’t work out. We all love baseball but school is the sure way to change the direction of our lives.” We will never know how many of those boys adhered to Brett’s advice, but he feels that if he just touched “one” then he’s met his challenge. Luis Ducasse proved to be a man of honor and integrity.  Every village was prepared for our arrival and everywhere we went he made Brett feel like a folk hero. Luis even arranged for Brett to be a guest on a national television sports program, taped in the capitol city of Santo Domingo. So that was our first year’s experience of going to the DR for “Homerun Hopefuls”. The irony is that we thought we’d brought down so much equipment, but once down there we saw that it was barely enough for all the boys in one single community. I went home knowing that I needed to launch a publicity campaign so that we could reach out to many more American kids to donate their old equipment and uniforms.  So over the past 5 years I’ve managed to book Brett as a guest on NBC’s “Weekend Today Show”, New York One, “Fox & Friends”, ESPN’s Magazine show and other programs. The value of publicity cannot be overrated and so last year, alone, we packed up 50 containers of equipment, uniforms, sneakers and assorted clothing (compared with the 5 boxes of our first summer), and gave it out to 20 different towns. Now that Brett is in college, he goes out of his way to recruit younger teens in high school to work on behalf of the charity. He strongly wants to keep it as a “kids helping kids” project. He’s been able to do this because of the contacts he’s made through the charity website: homerunhopefuls.org  Personally, I just love taking the younger kids along who have never been exposed to poor conditions, no less poverty. They truly return home “transformed”.  I’ve been told by their parents that they finally appreciate all of the luxuries they have back here in the States.   And so every year my husband and I spend a tremendous amount of time and large sums of our own personal money to finance our son’s charity. Is it worth it? Can you put a value on a close and loving parent-child relationship? Brett is constantly in touch with us for “Homerun Hopefuls” conference calls. Every major decision we make together as a family. Throughout the winter I still picture in my mind the young hopeful faces of the hundreds of young boys who come out to greet us each summer. OK, so I complain a lot about the lack of air conditioning, outhouses and food. And I get especially testy about the horrendous state of my frizzy hair. But would I give this up? Never!                                  Click here to learn more about homerunhopefuls.org