A charitable baseball camp in Beijing is changing the lives of orphans and poverty-stricken children, endowing them with dreams and courage.

The camp, founded by former Most Valuable Player (MVP) of China Baseball League Sun Lingfeng, aims to nurture a better future for these children through baseball.

Now the camp has enrolled 14 boys ranging from 7 to 11 years old. Some of them have lost their parents, and some of them lived with their grandparents on basic living allowances before coming to the camp.

“Most of the kids here are orphans,” Sun told Beijing Youth Daily during an interview.

According to Sun, these children were selected nationwide. After receiving signed consent from their guardians, Sun took them to Beijing for education and professional baseball training, with a hope to foster a batch of professional players and coaches.

Academic and baseball courses are not the whole curriculum for the children. Teachers and coaches of the camp also place high attention on the children’s moral development.

“We teach them to be sincere and grateful so that they will have a healthy development,” said Sun.

The 14 boys are now studying at an elementary school near the baseball camp, and are divided into three grades according to their ages and educational backgrounds. All of them are studious students, and some of them are even top students.

Normally, they will come back to the camp at 3:00 pm for baseball training, but they have to stay at the camp for the entire afternoon during game seasons.

In order to improve their physical conditions, Sun requires the canteen of the camp to offer a meat dish for each meal, saying the children must take in enough nutrition, especially at the critical stage of their physical development.

Though the children might still feel blue when it comes to their previous life experiences, they have already taken the baseball camp as their home.

“I don’t want to go back to where I lived before; the camp is my home,” said a boy named Liu Xiaoshuang. Liu is very grateful to his coaches and teachers, because they are the people who changed his life.

Thanks to Sun and the other coaches, the children at the camp are able to enjoy quality education and life. Four of them even went to Japan for games on behalf of the Chinese national baseball team and won a PONY tournament.