Despite all the drama in MLB nowadays there is some good news to report. If you haven’t heard already, the Los Angeles Dodgers were named the 2020 ESPN Sports Humanitarian Team of the Year.
Nice!
The award is in recognition of the amazing work that the Dodger’s official charity, the Los Angeles Dodgers Dream Foundation, has done. The announcement was made yesterday during the 2020 ESPY awards.
The LADF was recognized for handling some of the biggest issues in Los Angeles today. Improving education, health care, homelessness, and social justice were just some of the issues that LADF has tackled head-on.
Along with the recognition comes a $100,000 award which the LAFD will use toward funding it’s programs in Los Angeles.
Dodgers owner and chairman Mark Walter, who is also the LADF chairman, made a statement regarding the honor:
“Our goal is to achieve the same level of excellence off the field that our fans demand from us on the field. This is much bigger than baseball. We want to tackle the city’s most significant challenges, such as unequal access to education, and we are striving to become the best philanthropic organization in the city working on these issues.”
LAFD has invested in more than $30 million in grants and programs for non-profit organizations. In the last 5 years alone it has raised more than $21 million. One big step LAFD took was handling the COVID-10 pandemic. They are providing over 279K meals over $659K in donations to support those in need during the crisis to focus on homelessness, food insecurities, lack of basic needs as well as anxiety.
What does the Los Angeles Dream Foundation do you ask? Well… (holding breath here):
- They support more than 100 non-profits annually-
- Assisted over 10,000 kids every year through their sports-based youth development program called RBI.
- The RBI program provides over 368,000 kids access to safe, playable spaces through its 51 Dodger Dreamfields.
- Engages 16,000 youth in the LA Reads literacy initiative with more than 3.5 million minutes read to date.
- Supports STEM curiosity in over 9,000 students through it’s Science of Baseball curriculum.
Congrats go out to the Los Angeles Dream Foundation as well as the Dodgers organization for such dedicated work and I hope their future holds a bright light towards helping others in need as they have been doing. Applause…
