Employee Spotlight: Restoring Pride in Puerto Rico

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

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

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

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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.

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Rain falls and wind blows metal panels across a street.

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

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A car navigates the flooded streets.

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

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The baseball field.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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David Campbell, Founder & Chairman, All Hands and Hearts

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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.

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

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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.

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Rafael Surillo Ruiz, Mayor, Yabucoa

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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.

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A crowd cheers and smiles in the bleachers around the field.

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Thank you, Travelers.

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Travelers logo.