Players Trust takes Live Below the Line Challenge for International Nonprofits

Major League baseball players, through the Players Trust,  are focused on identifying and funding innovative approaches to help eradicate issues associated with poverty around the world.

For example, in 2008, more than one in 20 children under five years of age was dying from preventable causes in the province of Barahona, located in the western region of the Dominican Republic near the Haitian border.

That’s when the Players Trust intervened through a grant to longtime partner Medicines for Humanity, a non-profit organization with a successful track record of reducing child mortality in some of the most desperate places on the planet.

Together, the Players Trust, Medicines for Humanity and Caritas Barahona, a local service agency, developed a sustainable system of nutrition services and access to basic medicines that would enable Caritas Barahona to prevent the needless deaths of children in the future, as well.

“We initiated a nutrition program and established community pharmacies to make basic medicines available 24/7 in the neediest areas in Barahona, providing resources to treat the other killers like pneumonia and diarrhea,” said Melissa Persaud, director of the Players Trust.

Five years later, malnutrition has been all but eradicated in Barahona, thanks to the collaborative efforts of the three organizations.

 “The Players Trust, the Diocese of Barahona, and Medicines for Humanity saw a need, worked in partnership and refused to give up until we reached our goals,” Persaud said.

“Together, we have achieved something extraordinary for families in Barahona. We improved critically needed health services for the children who needed our help the most.”

But the work in the Dominican Republic is not over for the Players Trust and Medicines for Humanity.

A grant from the Trust is helping to fund the La Loma Health Education project.  In its fifth year, the program provides a rigorous certification training for a group of 60 community health workers in San Pedro de Marcoris.

Another Trust grant to Medicines for Humanity is addressing poor water quality and lack of sanitation in Quisqueya through the Water, Sanitation and Hygeine (WASH) project.

And the Strong Mothers, Strong Babies program entered its second year in 2014, reducing infant mortality and building the capacity of the healthcare system in Las Matas de Farfan, an area with one of the highest mortality rates in the Dominican Republic.

By supporting the Players Trust through the Live Below the Line campaign you’ll be helping organizations such as Medicines For Humanity address the needs of impoverished populations around the world.  Thank you for your consideration.

To visit the Players Trust Live Below the Line homepage click here.