SAN FRANCISCO -- During an on-field ceremony prior to tonight’s game, San Francisco Giants players Noah Lowry, Aaron Rowand and Randy Winn will represent all Major Leaguers when they honor 18 Bay-area high school students serving as Captains of the Oakland and San Francisco Action Teams, part of a service-learning program in which Major League players and high school students are inspiring and training the next generation of volunteers. During the 2007-08 school-year, these Bay-area Action Team Captains raised awareness about the importance of community involvement among other students in their high schools and organized hundreds of other students to get involved in volunteer activities.

Administered by the Major League Baseball Players Trust and Volunteers of America, the Action Team program encourages young people throughout the United States to volunteer in their communities. To date, Action Teams of high school students and Major Leaguers have inspired more than 12,000 high school students across the United States to help over 55,000 people in need by volunteering in their communities, while an Action Team service-learning curriculum created by the Players Trust in partnership with The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition teaches valuable community service skills to 700,000 high school students in more than 5,000 classrooms across the country.

Receiving signed certificates of achievement from the players tonight are 2007-08 San Francisco and Oakland Action Team Captains from Mt. Eden High School, Athenian High School and Immaculate Conception Academy. Among their many efforts this past school year, these Bay-area Action Team Captains and their peers set up a library at a local housing complex.

Action Teams are working together in Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Mobile, New York City, Oakland, Philadelphia, Portland (Maine), San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C.. Volunteers of America and the Major League Baseball Players Trust are planning to expand the Action Team program to Chicago, Cleveland and Tampa during the 2008-09 school-year.

Through the Players Trust, Major Leaguers contribute their time, money and celebrity to call attention to important causes affecting the needy and to help encourage others to get involved in their own communities. In partnership with Volunteers of America, the national human service organization, the Players Trust created and helps administer the Action Team, a national youth volunteer initiative currently inspiring the next generation of volunteers in cities throughout the United States. For more information on the Major League Baseball Players Trust, please visit www.MLBPLAYERS.com.