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MORE THAN A GAME.

Help Build the Community Center in Barahona, Dominican Republic.

Twenty years ago, I started building relationships in Barahona. Those relationships kept drawing me back. What began as visits became friendships, and those friendships eventually became a responsibility.

The more time I spent there, the more I met young people who reminded me of kids anywhere else. They had dreams. They worked hard. They wanted something better for themselves and their families. Yet I watched too many students leave school long before they should have. Some went to work. Some stepped into responsibilities at home. Others simply found themselves carrying burdens at an age when they should have been focused on learning and growing.

Those experiences stayed with me. I kept wondering how different things might look if someone reached them sooner. If they had people encouraging them before they disconnected from school. If they had mentors who believed in them. If they could see opportunities beyond the circumstances surrounding them.

What I've learned over the years is that relationships come first.

In the Dominican Republic, baseball creates those relationships better than almost anything else. It's part of everyday life. It's part of the culture. It's something young people genuinely love. Baseball gave us a place to start. It gave us a way to connect with students, earn trust, and become part of their lives. The game brought us together, but it was never the end goal.

The more time we spent on the field, the more obvious it became that the real opportunity existed beyond the game itself. The conversations after practice mattered. The friendships mattered. The encouragement mattered. We weren't simply building baseball players. We were building relationships with young people who needed someone in their corner.

As those relationships grew, so did the vision.

What began with The Straley Project eventually expanded into a Community Center because we wanted more young people to have the same opportunity to connect, grow, and belong. At the same time, it became increasingly clear that sports alone weren't enough. The future we wanted for these students required something more. It required a place where learning could continue, where mentorship could continue, and where students could find support long after the final out had been recorded.

That's what led us to the vision for the Community Center.

The Community Center is not a separate mission from the work happening on the field. It's the next step in the same journey. The relationships built through The Straley Project create opportunities to encourage students, help them stay connected to school, and remind them that their future is still being written. The Community Center will give those same students a place to continue learning, develop new skills, receive mentorship, and discover possibilities they may never have imagined for themselves.

When people ask why we invest in sports, the answer is simple. Sports bring people together. They open doors. They create trust. They give us a chance to walk alongside young people during some of the most important years of their lives.

That's why we say:

More Than A Game. A Pathway.

Because the field is where many of these stories begin. It is not where they end.

Your support helps us continue building those pathways and creating opportunities for Dominican youth in Barahona.

Thank you for being part of the journey.

EIN: 85-0947825 | Contact: info@thestraleyproject.org

The Straley Project: Baseball in the Dominican Republic Where Every Player Stays in School

An education‑first baseball and softball program where every player must stay in school and graduate