Charitable Activities
In 1999, Garth Brooks began the Teammates for Kids Foundation which provides financial aid to charities for children. The organization breaks down into three categories spanning three different sports.
- Touch 'Em All Foundation – Baseball Division
- Top Shelf – Hockey Division
- Touchdown – Football Division
The foundation enlists players to donate a predetermined sum of money depending on their game performance. Brooks has participated in spring training for the San Diego Padres in 1998 and 1999, the New York Mets in 2000 and, most recently, with the Kansas City Royals in 2004 to promote his foundation. Starting during the 2008 season, fans at Royals games in Kauffman Stadium now sing along to "Friends in Low Places".
Brooks is also a fundraiser for various other charities, including a number of children's charities and famine relief. He has also donated at least $1 million to wildlife causes. It was announced that Garth would perform a charity concert on January 25 and 26, 2008, at the Staples Center for the victims of the recent California Wildfires. On December 1, tickets went on sale and sold out within minutes, prompting them to announce 3 more shows. All 5 L.A. shows sold out in less than 59 minutes. CBS aired the first of these concerts (January 25 at 9 pm) live, giving viewers a chance to donate to the Firefighters Relief efforts.
In December 2010, Garth played 9 shows in less than a week in Nashville at Bridgestone Arena to benefit victims from the May 2010 Nashville flood. Over 140,000 tickets were sold and $5 million dollars raised.
A $500,000 donation Brooks made to Integris Canadian Valley Regional Hospital in Yukon, Oklahoma, in 2005, led to a widely-publicized lawsuit. According to Brooks, the hospital promised to name a new women's health center after his mother, Colleen Brooks, who died of cancer in 1999; the hospital later decided not to build the new facility, took the position that its naming commitment was non-binding, and refused to return the donation. On January 24, 2012, an Oklahoma state court jury in Claremore found in favor of Brooks, ordering the hospital to pay $500,000 for the original donation and an additional $500,000 in punitive damages.
Brooks, along with Trisha Yearwood, has supported Habitat for Humanity’s work over the years, including the annual Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project. They have worked alongside the Carters in the United States and in Haiti, lending their time and voices to help build safe, decent and affordable homes. Brooks’ Teammates for Kids Foundation provided more than $1 million in funding to Habitat to help build homes in Thailand following the Asian tsunami.
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Famous quotes containing the words charitable and/or activities:
“Whensoever any affliction assails me, me thinks I have the keyes of my prison in mine owne hand, and no remedy presents it selfe so soone to my heart, as mine own sword. Often meditation of this hath wonne me to a charitable interpretation of their action, who dy so: and provoked me a little to watch and exagitate their reasons, which pronounce so peremptory judgements upon them.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)