The former Pirates coach and his wife say they’re looking to prevent bullying from school to the professional world
PITTSBURGH —
Joey and Kiria Cora, through the Cora Foundation, have been working for the last three years to put a stop to bullying across the Pittsburgh area and around the country. That passion started after experiencing its impacts firsthand.
“We tried to deal with the situation. We didn’t find anybody. We didn’t know where to go, how to do it,” said Joey Cora, a former Major League Baseball player and director of operations for the Cora Foundation.
“After we lived through this hard experience, I finally found that we are missing pieces,” said Kira Cora, founder and chief executive of the Cora Foundation.
The organization holds sessions at schools, churches, and online to help anyone in need of support addressing bullying.
“We go to the school to share our protocol and to create a preventing method where the school need to know when to speak, how to report, and what to do when you are experiencing a bully,” Kira Cora said.
The couple also aims to help Hispanic and Latino families break away from a stigma they understand well.
“The macho community, they just don’t want to deal with it. ‘I’m just going to hit somebody or whatever. And I don’t want to tell my dad, I don’t want to tell my mom, because if I do, they’re going to they’re going to get on me.’ That’s not supposed to happen,” Joey Cora said.
As a former MLB player and Pirates third base coach, Joey Cora has seen the ripple effects of bullying even at the professional level and believes it needs to be addressed early.
“You can see that when they were little, they went through it. And that shows up. That shows up in performance, that shows up in the way you treat people and how you become a good teammate or a bad teammate, because sometimes that, that stays right here in your head, and your heart, and you got scars from it. And that’s what we’re trying to avoid,” he said.
Regardless, Coras believes that stopping bullying requires a group effort.
“When a community learns together, it trains their ability to resolve anything. And we have the resources, and the opportunity to learn more about what is bullying, what looks like bullying, and what are the red flags,” Kira Cora said.
If you would like to learn more about the foundation or would like to volunteer, click here.