Matt Boyd’s baseball career at Wrigley Field runs alongside Ashley Timm Boyd’s nonprofit Kingdom Home in eastern Uganda—created after a bus carrying 36 girls was intercepted and local authorities asked for help. With a 2025 All-Star season and a new fundraisin
When the stadium lights come on. Matt Boyd can still feel the pull of the other life he’s built—one that doesn’t involve a mound at all. In Chicago. he’s a Cubs left-hander in his second season with the team. carrying his own statistics and expectations into each start. But across 7. 700 miles. his wife is supervising an entirely different kind of work: protecting children in eastern Uganda from neglect. terror. and sexual exploitation.
The two threads—baseball and advocacy—aren’t separate for Boyd. Ashley Boyd describes a partnership formed long before they knew where the roads would lead.
“[Matt] knew how he wanted his career to unfold, and he knew it was going to be an all-in situation for the two of us if it was going to go that way,” Ashley said. “But he didn’t want me to forsake my passions and my dreams for all of his.”
She adds that the support has always gone both directions. “So he’s been incredibly supportive ever since Day 1. As I’ve supported him chasing his baseball career, he’s supported me. And. really. as time has progressed and our careers have unfolded. really each other’s passions have just become each other’s passions. if that makes sense.”.
Boyd, now 35, has found his place in the major leagues. He’s in his second season with the Cubs and the fifth major-league team of his 12-year career. In 2025, he posted a 14-8 record and a 3.21 ERA—his best numbers across those 12 years—and he made his first All-Star team.
Still, the turning point for him wasn’t just reaching the top. He says he wouldn’t have lasted through injuries. trades. demotions. and being “swapped by teams like kids swapping baseball cards” without Ashley. Her foundation. meanwhile. began with a calling she says she’s held since high school: to advocate for people who need help most.
That calling has taken Ashley to eastern Uganda, to a place she calls Kingdom Home. It’s where safety and joy now fill the lives of children who. until recently. were surrounded by neglect. terror. and despair. Ashley would not reveal the exact location of Kingdom Home. saying she does so out of concern for the children living there.
Matt says Ashley was never asking him to abandon what he wanted. Instead, she offered him a story he couldn’t shake.
He recalls when they first met, when Ashley told him about her dream—her heart for social justice—and what she learned about the sex trade, especially as it affects children. “How children who are in situations where they should be loved on and cared for are being exploited,” he said.
Kingdom Home, Boyd says, began in urgency. The immediate spark traces back to a bus filled with 36 little girls bound for a “hell” in a brothel in a big city far from their rural homes. Local authorities intercepted the bus and contacted a social worker who had taken in children before. But her husband had died, and she no longer had the means to care for another three dozen.
Ashley’s route into this work runs through her earlier years with a nonprofit called Remember Nhu. dedicated to ending child sex slavery. The organization is named after a young Cambodian child who was 12 when her grandmother sold her to a man for three nights. after which the child was sold again to the same man.
Through a contact from that work, Ashley learned of the plight of the children on the bus. Boyd describes the moment the question landed on them.
“So they reached out to us. ” Matt said. “and they said. ‘We don’t have the funding to support them right now. Would you guys want to partner with them?’ And. like. you know how the Lord works. the opportunity presented itself. and we said. ‘No. we can do something apart from them; let’s start a nonprofit. and let this be the first step.’”.
It was 2018.
They had just welcomed their first child, Meira Joy, and three more children followed. Boyd’s baseball future, at the same time, was still uncertain. He was shuttled between the minors and major league opportunities, and financial security wasn’t guaranteed.
“A leap of faith,” Ashley said. “It just seemed too divine to say no to the opportunity. So we said yes. we took that leap of faith. and. thankfully. we haven’t had to do it on our own. It started out just word of mouth, talking to people we know, and has grown. As the support has grown, our reach has grown, and we’ve been able to help more and more people.”.
Kingdom Home is now made up of three buildings spread over 14 acres. housing 90-some-odd girls and boys in need of protection and love. Ashley serves as executive director, supervising staff stateside and in Uganda. The nonprofit has also raised funding for another facility—for young adults—and is working toward a fifth home to house more kids an hour away.
“We’re a prevention home,” Ashley said. “We want to identify children who are at risk and bring them into our care before any exploitation is ever even a reality in their life because we know that trauma cannot be erased.”
She describes many children arriving as orphans, abandoned, or “effectively abandoned,” meaning there was someone who should have been looking out for them but wasn’t equipped to do so.
“And so, many of them have not been actual victims, praise God for that,” she said. “But a handful have been victims of sexual exploitation. They have been sold or their families have tried to sell them into child marriages.”
Ashley also points to exploitation that takes different forms, including child labor. “A few of the boys and girls who are very. very young. like 5. 6. 7. have scars on their faces because they’re dealing with uranium. trying to sift through these mines to get gold and parts to make batteries and things like that.”.
She returned from a weeklong visit to Uganda this year, describing it as a full-circle moment. Ashley first went to Uganda as a teenager through a high school exchange program and says she “somehow knew” she would return. Oregon and Uganda are both described as roughly the same size. though Oregon has around 4.27 million people and Uganda has roughly 50 million. with three-quarters of the population 35 or younger.
“That was a life-changing opportunity,” Ashley said of her first visit. “I think anytime in those formative years you’re able to step out of your comfort zone and experience what life is like for someone in an entirely different culture, it’s impactful.”
“I just fell in love with the country,” she added. “It’s hard not to. A beautiful place full of beautiful people. So I always knew at some point that I would end up back in Uganda.”
Boyd estimates he has been to Uganda three or four times, with his most recent visit a year ago. When he was with the Tigers, he says teammates joined him on that journey.
“We’ve never wanted to push anything on anybody,” Matt said. “However, I’ve had so many teammates over the years that have partnered with us financially.”
He’s also brought the familiar objects of his job—bats and balls—to introduce a game the children have never seen before.
The scale of the challenge is, by his account, hard to fit into a single life or a single place. Child trafficking exists in Uganda, he says, but it exists in the United States as well.
“It exists here,” Matt said. “It looks different than it does in Uganda, but it’s here.”
A 2024 U.S. State Department report on human trafficking cited a study estimating 27.6 million people were exploited in forced labor globally. including at least 3.3 million children. The study also describes child trafficking as occurring as sex trafficking and/or forced labor. including domestic servitude and forced begging.
Boyd and Ashley, he says, aren’t unaware of the resistance that follows when people try to confront something brutal.
“When you think about things that are bad, things that are horrible — there is no other word for it — people want to do something, but it’s hard to talk about, and the lack of attention brought to it lets it grow in the darkness,” he said. “It needs to be brought to the light.”
This spring, that light was reflected in a recognition from the Major League Players Association. This past April, the Players Trust—its charitable arm—gave Boyd its first Most Valuable Philanthropist Award. The honor came with a $10,000 grant. The Players Trust said it intends to give six awards this season.
Then, on June 19, after the Cubs play the Blue Jays that afternoon, Matt and Ashley Boyd will host “Where Hope Begins,” a fund-raising event for Kingdom Home at Wrigley Field’s Catalina Club.
For Ashley, the work isn’t defined by numbers or grants. She says each story matters, especially the children she has known from the beginning—those she’s watched grow over eight years into young women with dreams.
“These children all mean so much to me,” Ashley said. “And all of their stories are worth telling. I think that the ones that are probably most near and dear to me are the ones I’ve known from the beginning because I’ve had the privilege and joy to watch them grow over these last eight years. Seeing them just blossom and become just wonderful young women who are so articulate and full of dreams and aspirations and taking steps toward achieving those things.”.
She tells the story of Angel, the middle child of five raised by a single mother. Ashley says Angel’s mother didn’t have funds to send any of her kids to school. let alone provide adequate housing. medical attention. and food. “So little Angel was living a very destitute life until she came into our care.”.
Now, Ashley says, Angel is dreaming of going to law school. She has also been named head prefect of her entire school, which Ashley describes as being like valedictorian. “I am very excited to see what Angel is going to do.”
The couple’s message is carried in that kind of turnaround—one child at a time, with the same insistence that first brought a family into a leap of faith. In their world, the battle isn’t won by headlines. It’s won by staying present.
“The battle, you see, is won, one precious child at a time.”
Matt Boyd Cubs Wrigley Field Ashley Boyd Kingdom Home Uganda child trafficking child sex slavery Players Trust Major League Players Association philanthropy nonprofit