Dimes lead to big change for underserved youth in the Battle Creek area

Editor’s note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave’s On the Ground Battle Creek series.

BATTLE CREEK, MI — The 10-cent deposit on bottles and cans is giving youth from low-income families in Battle Creek opportunities to play ball and see how the pros do it.

This grassroots effort began in 2023 while Brittney Dowdy watched her son, Bentley, participate in a free baseball program at Claude Evans Park, offered through Gray’s On Deck LLC, owned by Evan Gray.

With a few weeks left in On Deck’s 2023 season, Dowdy and her son, Bentley, now a 4th grader at Riverside Elementary, Gray, and members of the baseball program began collecting bottles and cans in the community. Evans also collected from his co-workers at United Parcel Service and others. The endgame was to collect enough to cover the cost of chartering a bus to transport 60 young baseball players to watch the Detroit Tigers play at Tiger Stadium.

Small change, big game experiences

The bottle and can collectors knocked their goal out of the park. The following year, they pitched in again and took more than 60 youth from On Deck to a White Sox game in Chicago.

While Gray continued to focus on his baseball program, Dowdy began exploring opportunities to send these kids to sports camps.

“I found out that the Detroit Lions were hosting a summer camp in Battle Creek. Bentley had gone to one in 2022,” says Dowdy, an administrative assistant at the Kalamazoo Regional Psychiatric Hospital (KRPH).

While she was able to pay the $249 for the football camp, she knew it was a “lot of money” for low-income families.

Youth football camps in Michigan typically range from $80 to over $150 per day, with specialized or overnight options, such as Offense-Defense or IMG Academy, ranging from $599 to over $3,000. Local university and high school day camps, such as those at Western Michigan University (WMU), often offer more affordable options, according to Offense-Defense Sports.

WMU football day camps this year range from $80 to $124 per participant, according to the university website.

“I knew if I could collect $9 from 28 people, I could send one kid to that Detroit Lions camp,” Dowdy says.

To augment bottle and can collections, she and her son came up with the idea to do a $9/$29 Mother/Son Birthday Challenge, which they posted on Facebook. People could donate $9 in honor of Bentley’s ninth birthday or $29 to commemorate her birthday, which is on March 29.

“I want to help people to do stuff they couldn’t really afford because they may have a single mom or a parent who’s working two jobs. I want them to have something they could feel good about,” Bentley says, “so they can have lots of fun at their camp and they also could try out new stuff instead of being on video games all day.”

Enough money was collected to send 32 kids to the Lions football camp in 2025, and feed them, their parents, and coaches, during the four-day camp.

Mother-to-Son Birthday Challenge 

The Birthday Challenge is being reissued this year to send kids to a University of Michigan Football Camp, May 16 to 17, at Battle Creek Central High School, which costs $130 per participant.

Eligibility for this camp includes a financial literacy component for participants that Dowdy hopes to offer in April, which is Financial Literacy Month. She’s in discussions with local banks to gauge their interest in making presentations.

“Our goal is to register 40 kids,” she says.

The Mother-Son Birthday Challenge began with a meaningful conversation between Dowdy and her son Bentley, who, on his birthday, asked, “How can we give back?” 

That single question turned a birthday into a mission, one that now provides life-changing experiences for local youth, according to a press release from Dowdy.

“The Mother-Son Birthday Challenge is about teaching our children the power of giving back,” said Dowdy in the press release. “Because of this community’s support, we are now an official nonprofit and able to reach even more families.”

From can collecting to building a foundation

This year’s camp callout has been changed to $10/$43 to reflect Bentley’s and his mother’s ages and is now operating as part of Dowdy’s B² (B-Squared) Foundation, which began in December.

She decided to form a nonprofit after a lack of funding prevented her from continuing a Spanish language course she offered that was taught by a Kalamazoo-based translator. The eight-week course called “Hola to Diploma” was held September-October, 2025, and cost $25 per child.

Dowdy had planned to extend the course to six months.

“When I didn’t have enough money to keep that program going, that’s when I decided to start the foundation,” she says.

The name is a play on the mother’s and son’s first names and an expression of their shared interest in mathematics. She serves as executive director/cofounder, and her son serves as cofounder. In addition to the two of them, the organization’s board of directors includes individuals from Battle Creek, Benton Harbor, Illinois, and Indiana.

B² has partnered with the Battle Creek Community Foundation (BCCF) to collect bottles and cans, says Amber Perry, program Manager in BCCF’s Grants Department.

“They donate their bottles and cans every two weeks,” Dowdy says.

In addition to the glass and aluminum that become cash for B², Forrester Insurance gave the foundation a nominal grant, and smaller promotional grants have also been received.  

Plans are in the works to add “Cooking With Confidence” and “Baking With Boys” sessions for youth and “S³ (S-Cubed) — Single Parent Self-Care Saturday” for adults. The latter relates to Dowdy’s experience growing up in a single-parent household and her experience as a single parent to her son.

“Bentley’s father walked out two weeks after I found out I was pregnant, and I haven’t seen him since,” Dowdy says. “I want to make sure Bentley has the opportunities I didn’t have. I’m instilling in him that by working hard, he can have more opportunities, and he should be saving money for a rainy day. Not having that positive male role model, I seek out those opportunities where he can get positive role models.”

Participating in baseball and football camps is fun, Bentley says.

“I’d like to see more kids at the camps because it would be more fun and we’d learn more,” he says. “I’ve made friends with all of the kids from the camps. I hang out with them and have a whole lot of new friends from other schools.”

In addition to students from Battle Creek Public Schools (BCPS) , youth served through B² have come from the Harper Creek, Lakeview, and Pennfield School districts.

“All we ask is that you have a financial need. We are targeted to serve low-income and underserved people,” Dowdy says.

While day-to-day B² operations fall to the Dowdys, including Bentley’s grandmother, Renee, there are friends who help when they can.

She says she bases the success of their efforts on parent feedback.

“Success is when I hear parents say they’ve seen a good change in their child or that the Lions Camp really helped their son and a nephew. A little dime can change things. It makes finding a pop can on the road a success for us.”

For additional information, contact Dowdy at 269-358-8383 or brittneyd@b-squaredfoundation.org.