What started as a passion for baseball for Everett Heckman has turned into a way for the Granville High School student to support children overseas.
When Heckman, 14, was tasked with finding something he was passionate about in James Browder’s “Experiential Learner Mastermind” class at Granville Middle, he decided to pick baseball – but he also wanted to help those struggling with poverty.
He watched a video of professional baseball player Mariano Rivera – who pitched for the New York Yankees from 1995 until 2013 – talking about how he did not have a baseball glove growing up and showed how he created his first baseball glove out of a cardboard box. Heckman wanted everyone who wanted to pursue their passion for baseball to have the opportunity. So, he set out to collect as many gloves and mitts as he could and to send them to kids in need.
Heckman started out by making flyers and putting them around his middle school. They would be collected in old banker boxes. They also had a box in a sports facility in Newark. Facebook, too, was a major source of donations after Heckman advertised the drive online.
“We were just reaching out on Facebook and just asking if anybody had gloves or anything that they were willing to give up for the project,” Heckman said.
Reaching out to people and finding the right connections is how Browder and Heckman were able to make this possible. John Reynaldo, a friend of Browder’s, hand delivers the gloves to kids in the Dominican Republic. Every time he goes back, he brings the gloves collected with him to pass out. Through this they are able to build a bigger meaning than to just donate to local communities.
“Eventually I was like, ‘wait, I think I know someone who goes to the Dominican Republic’ and then I just gave [Heckman] their contact number,” Browder said.
In his first year, Heckman was able to collect and donate 41 mitts.
Now a freshman in high school, he continues to collect gloves and mitts at Granville High and across Licking County. In 2025, he collected another 43 mitts and 10 gloves.
“Expanding to places that are more convenient for people to donate really stretches those donations a lot,” Heckman said.
Heckman hopes to continue this annually throughout high school. The more drives, the more donations, the more kids in need get gloves, he said. A lot of these families are worried about putting food on the table so extra activities are not their first priority when it comes to spending money.
“There are kids from these neighborhoods who go on to play professional baseball. It’s their way out. So he [Everett] very, very possibly could be putting a glove on a kid’s hand who will go play professional baseball someday, and we’ll never know,” Browder said.
Heckman hopes to shorten the time frame between each donation bin going to the Dominican Republic.
“You can go be a change maker. You don’t need a degree, you don’t need a goal line, you don’t need permission. You just need to start reaching out to people and taking massive action,” Browder said.
Heckman’s goal for the future is to work on donations year round and to eventually be able to travel to the Dominican Republic to see the kids that he donates to.
Talya Dersu writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.