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Over the years, many different Little Leagues and Districts in Canada have sponsored children’s baseball programs in third world countries, or even in more affluent countries where baseball is either a new sport or the area has been devastated by a natural disaster. Many of these efforts have been ad hoc in nature, dependent upon the interest and access of a local volunteer who travels often to the affected areas.

Here is a story of one local volunteer who is attempting to make this more than a casual arrangement.

How do you make sure your Little Leaguer enjoys your next family vacation to the tropics?

"Let them play baseball," Kevin Murphy of Boulevard Travel* would tell you.

Mr. Murphy is part of a movement to offer families ‘full-bodied’ vacations to beach destinations in developing countries. These vacation packages would combine programs allowing vacationing children to play ball with local Little Leaguers, attend local professional games with their families, and be given the opportunity to volunteer with charities working in local slum areas. They would bring baseball to marginalized groups of children who wouldn’t normally have access to the game, all while enjoying all-inclusive luxury accommodation at the end of each day.

Mr. Murphy has specialized in both sports team travel packages and volunteer travel packages in the past. This is the first time he’s ever been asked to combine the two.

The idea was the brainchild of Todd Enquist, a veteran volunteer aid worker**, and an expert on travel in developing countries. He is also a Baseball Canada certified baseball coach. He calls it, "Baseball Volun-Cheering".

Todd recently went on a sample trip with his own ten-year-old son, Riki, to the beautiful Mexican beach town of Progresso Yucatan.

...the glorious game of baseball itself turned out to be an international language...

On consecutive days of their Mexican baseball adventure, Riki practiced and played with a local Little League club called the Chicxulub Navigantes (Navigators). Riki took batting practice with them one day and played left field the following day in a game against a neighbouring village. Although Riki didn’t speak a word of Spanish at the on-set, the glorious game of baseball itself turned out to be an international language.

In the evenings, Todd and Riki attended Yucatan Leones (Lions) games. The Leones are the professional Mexican League team based in nearby Merida. They play out of a twelve thousand seat stadium packed with colourful fans, entertaining and uniquely Mexican sideline diversions, and curious but delicious stadium food. They also play some pretty good ball. The Leones won the Mexican League championship two years earlier and are perennial contenders, so the product on the field was tremendously entertaining for both father and son.

...for the benefit of impoverished children who otherwise could not afford to participate in our great game...

Todd and Riki joined a local food bank official for a tour through the ramshackle neighbourhood they serve and visited with a ten-year-old local boy named Gasbar and his mother.

"They invited us inside and made us feel right at home," recalls Todd, "The boy’s mother even gave my son one of the hand-made souvenir shell statues she makes for the vendors in Progresso who sell them to tourists."

After the visit, Todd and the official discussed how future volunteers could participate in the distribution of food hampers or the repair and construction of safe homes for particularly impoverished families. When asked whether slum-kids like Gasbar played baseball, Todd was told that most of the families could barely afford a decent pair of shoes, let alone a baseball glove.

"I guess the most heart breaking part," said Todd, "Is that the ball diamond is adjacent to the slum. Only two or three blocks away from Gasbar’s house."

Capitalizing on his connections with local charities, Todd would like to use his Baseball Volun-Cheer model to bring complete team-size sets of donated equipment with him on future Baseball Volun-Cheer tours to set-up and equip local baseball programs for the benefit of impoverished children who otherwise could not afford to participate in our great game.

...Mexico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic...

"I believe the Baseball Volun-Cheer model will work in a variety of popular Caribbean beach vacation markets and, when I say ‘work’, I mean work for everybody; not only ensuring its own sustainability by making money for investors, but also helping impoverished children, helping local charities, bringing better coaching to local Little Leaguers, and providing baseball families with a tremendously satisfying, enjoyable, and fulfilling vacation experience like no other," says Todd.

"We need people to step forward," says the plan’s visionary. "People who are willing to take a chance, people who want to create something larger than themselves. Someone who is willing to invest in the program’s future success."

Todd can be contacted by email:
todd@carpenters4cambodia.org

Or through the website:
carpenters4cambodia.org

To watch a fun little video of Todd & Riki’s baseball adventure go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp-_CYsXo-0

*Boulevard Travel is a major tour and travel company based in Calgary, Alberta; an area that supports a professional Golden League team, a collegiate summer league team and has a flourishing network of leagues for local children’s baseball as well as state-of-the-art development programs for coaches through Baseball Canada. Few people know that both Alex Rodriguez and Edgar Martinez played in Calgary during the formative years of their careers.

**Todd Enquist is the founder and director general of Carpenters4Cambodia a registered Canadian charity that completes one school or orphanage construction project per year in Cambodia (carpenters4cambodia.com) He also serves on the board of another Alberta charity that has built over 40 schools and orphanages around the world and supports countless others (fortheloveofchildrensociety.org). Todd Enquist is also a Baseball Canada certified coach, taught baseball to kids at home and around the world for several years, and has worked in the travel industry for over twenty years.