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Dave Valle -- part-time broadcaster, full-time philanthropist -- remembers the exact day he realized giving back needed to be his mission. It was 1985. Valle, then a 25-year-old trying to make it as a Major League catcher, was playing winter ball in the Dominican Republic and found himself shocked by the poverty that surrounded him as he tried to raise a newborn. Then, one day, as Valle and his t footballgames eammates departed the field and waited on their bus, a mob of kids eagerly approached them. They didn't want autographs. They wanted money, food -- anything the players would spare so they could make it through the day. "You're standing there watching your 4-month-old boy," Valle recalled, "and you see children digging around in the garbage and looking for basically anything they can find. It's to footballgames ugh, man. It lets you know how bad it is in other places." Today, Valle and his wife, Vicky, run the Esperanza International Foundation, a 16-year-old nonprofit organization that looks to fight poverty in the Dominican Republic and Haiti by providing small loans, health care and education. For their latest initiative, they got an assist from the Mariners and the Major League Baseball-Dominican D footballgames evelopment Alliance. Leading up to the Mariners' game on Sept. 10, in what would be their "Salute to Latin American Beisbol Night," a portion of ticket sales went to Esperanza. That night, Safeco Field also launched a 30-day text messaging campaign that's backed by the Seattle International Foundation and built to support Esperanza's work in Hispaniola. From now until Oct. 10, fans can text the wo footballgames rd "HOPE" to 80000 to make a $10 donation to help Valle's organization continue to carry out its mission. "We wanted to try and see how we can use baseball to create an awareness," Valle said. "And we all know that over there [in the Dominican], baseball is everything." Valle spent 13 years in the Majors as a catcher -- 10 of them with Seattle, which made him a second-round Draft pick in 1978 -- a footballgames nd is now a part-time broadcaster for the Mariners, Root Sports and MLB Network. But his most important work continues to be in the Caribbean. Since it began in 1995, Valle's organization has handed out 125,000 loans totaling $27 million. Through that, it has received a 98-percent repayment rate -- an impressive number considering Esperanza targets those who make no more than $2 a day. "Poor peopl footballgames e pay their debts," Valle said. "It's their last hold on their character and their identity and their name. For all of them, their good name is all they have, and they want to keep that." Valle noted that 60 percent of the population in the Dominican Republic lives under the poverty line, a number that's even higher in neighboring Haiti, which is still trying to recover from the devastating earthq footballgames uake of 2010. In hopes of combating that, Esperanza has 115 full-time employees working in 12 offices on the island. More information on the organization and its current initiative can be found at esperanza.org. "There's always people wanting to do things, whether it's players from the Dominican Republic or myself, trying to figure out how to give back," Valle said. "That was the impetus to creat footballgames e this organization." That day at the ballpark more than 25 years ago, Valle and his wife asked a local street vendor to cook all the food she had left for the hungry children. With that, the kids ate, but Valle and his wife quickly came to an obvious realization: In a few hours, they'd be hungry and ravaging for food once again. Plenty more needs to be done. "Just talking about it that night," Va footballgames lle said, "we made the decision that if we ever had capacity to do something more, we would." Now, Valle does a lot more. footballgames
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