Yanks join You Gotta Believe families for HOPE Week

NEW YORK -- When Clay Holmes examined the summary sheets posted ahead of this year’s HOPE Week, the words "foster care" clinched which event he would sign up for. His mother is a counselor back home in Alabama, and he believes that “her heart for it has rubbed off on me a little bit.”

The All-Star reliever joined general manager Brian Cashman, shortstop Isiah Kiner-Falefa and assistant hitting coach Hensley Meulens on Thursday at Van Cortlandt Park as the Yankees continued HOPE Week, honoring "You Gotta Believe," a nonprofit that works to find permanent families for youth. Holmes’ mom, Teresa, would surely approve.

“It’s an amazing foundation,” Holmes said. “It’s just cool to see and hear the stories of these families and their kids, and just what being part of a family and experiencing some love can do. It’s just cool to see the smiles on their faces today.”

Hours before the Yankees hosted the Reds at Yankee Stadium, Holmes, Kiner-Falefa and Meulens were on a different field in the Bronx, tossing footballs and Wiffle balls across a grassy expanse adjacent to the nation’s oldest public golf course.

“It’s nice to be part of an organization that really cares about what’s going on outside the lines of the field and giving back,” Kiner-Falefa said. “This whole week is something that’s very cool, and something I’ve never been a part of. Putting smiles on a kid’s face and showing you care about them goes a long way.”

YGB was created in 1995, and its organization and staff is made up entirely of foster parents or former foster youth, helping connect hundreds of at-risk teenagers in the New York metro area to loving families.

According to the nonprofit, nearly 50% of the 25,000 U.S. children who age out of foster care each year will experience homelessness. They are also more likely to experience unemployment, unplanned pregnancy, legal system involvement, substance abuse and lack basic health care services.

Only a tiny percentage will have a college degree by age 26, and most are unlikely to have a high school diploma and earn enough to support themselves.

“There’s an age component where people get timed out if they haven’t been placed yet,” Cashman said. “[YGB] is a safety net to capture them and place them in a family environment, a home, to get the life they deserve. Not everybody was born lucky. You Gotta Believe is trying to take care of people.”

As part of Thursday’s festivities, the Yankees hosted Joe Toles, a Bronx product who has adopted eight children with help from the nonprofit. Now a resident of Auburn, Ala., who jokingly refers to his busy home as “the house of misfit toys” and calls himself an “ambassador of hope,” Toles adopted his first son, Xavier, when Xavier was 18 years old.

“The one thing I want people to know is, you don’t have to adopt a baby,” Toles said. “You Gotta Believe focuses in on the older kids. There’s a population of kids out there that is ignored, overlooked and underserved. Their main focus is to make sure that people know that these kids exist, they can get support and they can be adopted.”

Mary Keane, the executive director of YGB and an adoptive mother of 13, said that each child in the organization’s care “is like this little jewel.”

“They just need somebody to take them and nurture them -- and they blossom,” Keane said. “They blossom when they get love.”

The Yankees made a $10,000 donation to assist YGB in its mission, which is to work toward a day when no young person leaves foster care without the unconditional lifetime commitment of a family.

“That’s the great thing about HOPE Week,” Cashman said. “For 13 years now, we’ve been getting exposed to foundations and organizations and personnel that are just, ‘Wow.’ I’m glad the Yankees are having a chance to connect their brand and shine a light on them.”