D-backs Give Back League to visit Hillsboro, Oregon

PHOENIX - This weekend, 25 members of the Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) front office, including several executives, will visit Hillsboro, Oregon to complete a two-day community service project. The group, which includes the winning team from the D-backs Give Back League and the MVPs of the other eight teams, will participate in various community service projects over the weekend. 

The D-backs chose Hillsboro, home of the D-backs' Class A Short-Season affiliate (@HillsboroHops), to help with Oregon-based charity Albertina Kerr and its mission to provide services to children, families and adults with developmental disabilities, hearing loss and mental health challenges. The winning team of the D-backs Give Back League, Fostering Hope, carried out several community projects over the course of 2013 to help foster care children and their siblings to reunite.

While in Oregon, members of the D-backs Give Back League will visit Albertina Kerr to provide entertainment and serve dinner to foster care families Saturday evening. Sunday morning, D-backs employees will join players and coaches from the Hillsboro Hops to help renovate and build gardens, a sand box and rain barrels for four community homes in the Hillsboro area. Foster care families and kids will also enjoy an evening out at the Hops' game along with D-backs employees on Sunday.

The D-backs Give Back League, created in 2012, is a unique volunteer effort that ties the organization's culture of innovation to its community contributions and involvement. It was created by employees of the organization seeking to find a way to volunteer for organizations that matter most to them. The program began with 18 different employees being selected to be the respective "co-captains" in the Give Back League among more than 100 volunteers and from there, they each drafted a dozen employees to create the nine teams. Each team determined a project that was meaningful to them with the intention of being finished by the end of the World Series. 

The projects among the nine teams have ranged from the renovation of four Child Protective Service offices around the state that assist foster kids to the renovation of a school playground; from reading to homeless children to packing "bags of hope" for youngsters who go hungry each weekend; and from building a homeless shelter to passing along the love of giving back in the community to those less fortunate. During this past offseason, nine teams presented what they had accomplished in the Phoenix community to their colleagues at Chase Field, with team Fostering Hope being voted as the winner by D-backs employees based on community impact, creativity, resourcefulness, team commitment and financial efficiency.