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  • Restoring Pride in Puerto Rico

Employee Spotlight: Restoring Pride in Puerto Rico

(SPEECH)
[MUSIC PLAYING]

(DESCRIPTION)
Text, Yabucoa, Puerto Rico. Clouds hover over a mountain ridge, a town sits nestled in a valley, cattle graze in a pasture.

(SPEECH)
NARRATOR: In the small seaside town of Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, baseball is something of an obsession.

(DESCRIPTION)
Kids play baseball in a field. Mario Martinez, Baseball Coach, Yabucoa Little League.

(SPEECH)
MARIO MARTINEZ: He start playing in the little leagues at around 3 or 4 years of age. It's the game that we all enjoy. And it is a passion of the people of Yabucoa.

(DESCRIPTION)
Rain falls and wind blows metal panels across a street.

(SPEECH)
NARRATOR: But when Hurricane Maria made landfall in Yabucoa, the island was devastated.

(DESCRIPTION)
A car navigates the flooded streets.

(SPEECH)
Residents were without basic necessities, food, water, medicine, and electricity.

(DESCRIPTION)
The baseball field.

(SPEECH)
Their fields of dreams left flooded, rutted, broken, and unusable. And without baseball, the hopes and dreams of the children of Yabucoa were on hold.

(DESCRIPTION)
Children sit on a fence. A man in a hard hat pulls ruined boards from a home. He wears a Hands and Hearts T-Shirt that says Disaster Relief Volunteer.

(SPEECH)
Travelers had reached out to All Hands and Hearts to ask about how we could help. All Hands and Hearts, a volunteer-based, nonprofit has been responding to disasters around the world since 2004. And in response to Hurricane Maria, had set up a base camp in Yabucoa.

(DESCRIPTION)
David Campbell, Founder & Chairman, All Hands and Hearts

(SPEECH)
DAVID CAMPBELL: One of the things that's important, if you really want to be helpful after a major disaster, in thinking about the psychological trauma that people have been through, is to listen to them and say, what could we do that you think would be most helpful?

NARRATOR: The community identified a safe place for the children to play the game they love as a priority.

(DESCRIPTION)
Volunteers rake the field, mow the grass, set up playground equipment.

(SPEECH)
On March 2nd, Travelers volunteers arrived in the Yabucoa just north of Maunabo to work with All Hands and Hearts and community volunteers to restore the neighborhood ball field to playing condition and to build a playground. The goal was to restore hope to the children and to a community traumatized by the hurricane.

NANCY CRUZ: I spent all my summers here with my family and I still have family here. So it means a great deal for me that Travelers has thought about Puerto Rico to come and restore some hope in this forgotten community.

DELPHA BLANCHARD: Families are stopping by wondering, are my kids going to be able to play here? Are we going to have a sense of normalcy here? And that's what we bring. We're bringing a sense of normalcy to a town that desperately needs it.

NARRATOR: When the work was finished, the community celebrated with a meal and, of course, their favorite pastime.

[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

(DESCRIPTION)
Rafael Surillo Ruiz, Mayor, Yabucoa

(SPEECH)
RAFAEL SURILLO RUIZ: I have a tremendous amount of emotion, because I feel that slowly but surely, we are returning back to normal. That's what repairing these facilities means to us. It helps us to become a community once again. For me, that is a great feeling. And I hope that we can all enjoy it together.

[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

(DESCRIPTION)
A crowd cheers and smiles in the bleachers around the field.

(SPEECH)
Thank you, Travelers.

(DESCRIPTION)
Travelers logo.

In September 2017, Hurricane Maria landed in Puerto Rico as a Category 4 hurricane. Its intensity devastated the country, destroying communities, collapsing infrastructure and taking lives.

Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, was one of the hardest hit regions on the island.

For the Yabucoa barrio, baseball was a passion. Even an obsession, Yabucoa’s leaders said. They had 40 teams, including an AA team, that involved about 700 residents. The game brought joy to kids of all ages and to the adults who watched them. But after Maria, many local ballfields were unusable. Yabucoa was known as the “land of champions” and they needed a “win” now more than ever.

So Travelers volunteers, in conjunction with All Hands and Hearts, the nonprofit volunteer-powered disaster relief organization, teamed up with the Yabucoa community to help bring back some fun and “normalcy” to families.

Watch the video here to see how, together, we restored one of the major baseball fields and built a brand-new playscape for the littlest Yabucoa locals.

Delpha Blanchard DiGiacomo of Travelers Investigative Services was part of the restoration crew that went to Puerto Rico. “It’s a little thing, but for that community, it’s huge. To be without power for months and to be without drinkable water for months, it’s very difficult. It’s hard to sit here and watch it happen and not do anything, so this trip was our opportunity to go do something.”

Puerto Rico and the town of Yabucoa are still rebuilding, but in the meantime, there’s a place for them to play and a reminder that there’s always help and hope.

More Employee Spotlights

Andy Darvell

Employee Spotlight: Mentee to Mentor

Andy Darvell uses his career experience and insight as a former mentee at BestPrep to pair employees with students eager to learn about business.

Shala Tavakoli

Employee Spotlight: Helping Small Business Owners

Shala Tavakoli hopes that her work to empower people in her community will inspire others to give back to their community by getting involved with nonprofit organizations.

Mike Stafford

Employee Spotlight: Building Up Travelers

Mike Stafford has two big passions: building things and helping others. See how he has combined them in his volunteer work at Travelers.

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