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One night a year, in a room in Philadelphia, cigars are lit for children who will never see the room

A VDG Cigars special report, with the Roberto Martinez Foundation

There is a particular way a child sits when there is nothing in their bag.

They keep it closed, on their lap, with both arms over it. When the teacher says take out your notebook, they spend a long time looking for something that is not in there, and then they say they forgot it — because forgetting happens to everybody, and having nothing does not. By the fourth or fifth time, they stop saying anything at all. They look out of the window instead. Somebody writes distracted in a file.

That child is eight years old. Nobody in the room is cruel to them. That is the part people get wrong about poverty in a classroom: there is rarely a villain. There is a teacher doing four jobs, a building that needed money twenty years ago, and a child who has quietly worked out that asking makes things worse for the people they love.

A short drive from that classroom, once a year in June, men in dinner jackets step out of cars at a golf club in Philadelphia. There is music. There is an open bar. There are cigars, and they are good ones. It would be easy to write that second room as an indictment of the first, and easy is usually a sign that you have stopped thinking. The two rooms are not opposites. They are connected by one evening, one man, and a decision that a night of luxury should be made to pay for something.

Roberto Martinez grew up watching people he knew disappear into violence and prison. He built RM Cigars. Then he built a foundation and put it in front of the cigars, and every year he fills a room with people who can afford to be there and asks them to look at children who cannot.

I sent the Foundation sixty-two questions. Not questions about brands, blends or sales — questions about what happens to a child nobody reaches, and what changes for the one somebody does. The answers are printed below in his words.

And I asked about the evening itself, because the evening is the engine. Nothing the Foundation does in a Philadelphia classroom in September happens without a room full of people in June deciding to be there.

The next gala is June 19, 2027 — Arabian Nights — at The Union League Golf Club at Torresdale, Philadelphia. Seats and sponsorships are limited and arranged directly through RM.

Read Part One slowly. These are not made-up children with a lesson attached. They are alive this afternoon, a few miles from the room where that evening in June will be held.

Part 1 — The Children Nobody Reaches

Describe the neighborhoods these children grow up in.

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: These neighborhoods are home to hardworking families but limited resources. Buildings are often worn, schools are underfunded, and safe spaces are scarce. Poverty is visible in the environment, but the deeper strain exists inside homes — parents choosing between rent and groceries, grandparents raising children again, and children learning early that survival often comes before childhood.

What stands out when you enter one of their schools?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Effort. Teachers and staff are doing everything they can with very limited resources. What is often missing are updated materials, basic supplies, enrichment opportunities, and sometimes even the tools students need to participate without embarrassment. The potential is present, but the support is not always sufficient.

What does a typical school day look like?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Many children arrive already carrying adult concerns. Some have not eaten enough, slept well, or brought what they need for class. They are trying to learn while also managing worry about what they lack and what awaits them at home.

What are they going without?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Beyond supplies and meals, many lack stable housing, reliable transportation, internet access, quiet study space, and consistent adult guidance. Just as important, some lack encouragement, exposure, and the belief that someone expects them to succeed.

What do they go home to?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Home can take many forms. Some return to loving families under financial strain. Others return to empty apartments while adults work multiple jobs. There may be overcrowding, food insecurity, or unsafe surroundings, alongside resilience and care expressed in different ways.

Who is caring for them after school?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Sometimes a parent, grandparent, or older sibling. Sometimes they are largely on their own. In some cases, older children are responsible for younger siblings, carrying responsibilities far beyond their age.

What do they begin to believe about themselves?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: When a child consistently feels “less than,” they can begin to internalize that belief — not only about resources, but about their worth and ability. That perception can become more damaging than the material lack itself.

How do they hide what they are going through?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Some withdraw quietly. Others act out. Many avoid participation, make jokes first, or try to become invisible before anyone notices what they do not have.

When does hope start to fade?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: There is no exact age, but by middle school many children have already formed beliefs about what is possible for them. This is why intervention must come early — before limitation becomes identity.

What do they dream about?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: They dream of becoming doctors, teachers, athletes, entrepreneurs, artists, and leaders. Those dreams endure when reinforced with opportunity and guidance. Without that reinforcement, they often shrink to what feels immediately attainable.

What do they stop asking for?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Help, supplies, activities, and explanations. Eventually, some stop asking altogether, attempting not to burden the people they love.

How does a child get pulled toward crime?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: It rarely begins as a conscious choice. It begins with unmet needs, limited supervision, frustration, and the desire to belong. Attention, small favors, and quick money from someone who appears to have what they lack can follow. By the time the risk is clear, the child may already feel trapped.

Who is offering that path?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Often someone older from the same environment who understands what the child is missing. They offer money, protection, status, and belonging.

Why does a child say yes?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Because children respond to immediacy — attention, acceptance, and reward. When the safe path feels distant and the risky path offers immediate benefit, the wrong choice can feel like the only available option.

What would have changed that decision?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: A trusted adult, a safe environment, real opportunity, and immediate alternatives. Guidance alone is not enough if viable alternatives do not exist.

What happens over time?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: At 12, it may be curiosity. At 16, it can become identity or system involvement. By 25, consequences may include incarceration, trauma, and instability. None of this is inevitable, but delay makes intervention more difficult.

What do you see in adults who came from that path?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Resilience and intelligence, but also guardedness. Many continue to expect instability even after achieving success.

What does that childhood take away?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Innocence, safety, and the freedom to simply be a child. Even with later success, those years cannot be recovered.

Does the cycle repeat?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: It can, when conditions remain unchanged. Education, employment, and housing all influence the next generation. Breaking the cycle requires sustained investment.

What does it cost a community?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: It costs talent, stability, leadership, and opportunity. It also places strain on systems and limits what future generations believe is possible.

What does it cost a country?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: It is significantly more expensive to respond to failure than to prevent it. Beyond financial cost, it represents lost potential — ideas, businesses, and leadership that never develop.

PETER STEFANIC

Part One is not comfortable, and it should not be made comfortable. Before we go on, let me say what I could not stop thinking while I read it.

If a family works hard, and these are good-hearted people, why should anyone have to choose between the rent and the groceries? We send resources around the world, and I am not against that. But the people closest to us are living on whatever gravel they happen to be standing on, and nobody seems to be counting them. The children already feel the difference. It is here, this early, that a child begins to think like someone much older than they are.

Think of the last time you lay awake over money. Most of us have had a month like that, and we remember how it followed us into the daylight. Now put that same weight on someone who is eight years old, who has no words for it, no way to fix it, and who has to sit through long division while carrying it. We would not send an adult into a working day in that condition and expect anything of them. We do it to children every morning, and then write “distracted” in the file.

Honestly, the section about the schools should not have to exist. We pay tax. We go to work and hand over part of our wages so that a society can be built with it. Do not misunderstand me, I am not arguing against paying. But of everything that money is asked to cover, a school should be the last thing allowed to run short — because when a school runs short, it is not an institution that suffers. It is a nine-year-old.

And let me make a comparison that may be uncomfortable. The children of the Second World War, and the generation directly after them, rebuilt a society with poverty always in the room, where a full meal could count as a luxury. That is precisely what they went out to build against: a country where a child would not leave home hungry, and would not lie awake wondering where the family was going to live. Something has happened since, because a great many families are drifting back toward the standard of living those generations spent their whole lives climbing out of. Our grandparents would not believe us if we told them. They did what they did so that this particular thing would be finished.

Understand, too, that no child chose any of this. Not the address, not the empty bag, not the man on the corner who was the first person in months to notice what they did not have. At first it costs them small things — a missing notebook, a joke made before anyone can ask why. Later it costs them the shape of an entire life.

And it costs the rest of us as well. Every neighbourhood that loses a generation loses the teachers, the tradesmen and the businesses that generation would have become. We pay for prisons instead of pencils, and then we call it unavoidable.

There is nothing unavoidable about a ten-year-old walking a five-year-old home because there is nobody else. That is a decision somebody has already made, by not making it.

Part 2 — The Children Who Are Reached

What changes when a child receives something of their own?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Even something simple, such as school supplies, can shift how a child carries themselves. It signals that they were seen, that they matter, and that they are prepared.

What do you see in that moment?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Relief, pride, and sometimes disbelief. Many are not accustomed to being individually considered.

What do they want to become?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Doctors, athletes, teachers, business owners, artists, and leaders. The objective is to connect those aspirations to real pathways.

Tell me about a child you never forgot.

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: There was a child I grew up with who I will never forget. I witnessed how quickly people around me were lost to violence or incarceration. One decision, one moment, could change everything. That realization made clear how fragile life can be and how easily a future can shift.

What became of him?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: He is now in college studying finance. That outcome reflects a broader truth: support is not only about resources, but about giving a child a reason to continue.

What do children need most?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Consistent adults who show up repeatedly. Supplies help, but stability, mentorship, and belief create lasting change.

How early must support come?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: As early as possible. However, it is never too late. Early support protects confidence before it hardens into hopelessness.

PETER STEFANIC

Read the answer about disbelief once more. A child handed a bag of school supplies does not really register the supplies. What lands is that somebody counted, and the number included them.

A pencil case costs less than most of us spend on an evening we will have forgotten by the weekend. Think about what we are holding at the end of a night like that: nothing. Then think about what that child is holding: proof. Physical, in their hands, that an adult somewhere in the world thought about them by name. I do not know many exchanges that lopsided.

Then comes the harder line, the one nobody can buy their way past. What these children need most is adults who show up again and again. It is the same thing every parent eventually learns about their own children — they do not remember the expensive day out, they remember that you were there on an ordinary Tuesday. A gift arrives once. Being counted on is what changes a person.

That cannot be done in a single evening. It has to be regular, unglamorous and long. If you are looking for the way in, look there first.

Part 3 — Roberto

What shaped your perspective?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Experiencing the loss of people I grew up with to violence and incarceration. It demonstrated how quickly a single decision can alter a life.

What does this work cost you?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Time, energy, and emotional weight. The most difficult aspect is recognizing that the need consistently exceeds available capacity.

If you could keep one thing?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: The ability to bring people together to change the direction of a child’s life.

PETER STEFANIC

The shortest answers in this report are here, and they carry the most weight.

Start with the people who are missing from these pages. He mentions those he grew up with who were lost to violence or prison, and then he moves on, because there is nothing more to say about them. But every one of them was once a child in Part One. Every one of them sat in a classroom with an empty bag. Nobody counted them, and now nobody can ask them what would have made the difference. They are who this report is really about — the ones who never got a page.

Then read the flattest sentence in the whole exchange again. The need consistently exceeds available capacity. That is administrative language for something unbearable. It means there is a list, and the list stops somewhere. It means that every year a child stands on the wrong side of that line and never learns how close they came to being reached. Nobody tells them. They simply go on believing that nobody counted, because from where they are standing, nobody did.

And notice what he says he would keep if everything else went. Not the company. Not the money. The ability to bring people together. That is easy to read past, and it is a claim about us rather than about him: what usually stands between a child and a different life is not a shortage of goodwill. It is that nobody gathered it into one room on one night.

Part 4 — The Gala

What do guests experience on arrival?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: A fully designed environment that includes music, atmosphere, hospitality, and premium cigars. Arabian Nights 2027 will feature immersive design, lighting, and color.

What does the room feel like?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Elegant, energetic, and diverse. It is a luxury experience grounded in a service-driven purpose.

When does it become more than a party?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: When the mission is presented and the realities facing children are fully understood.

When do guests become part of it?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: When they recognize that their participation directly contributes to what happens next.

What is featured?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Curated music, live entertainment, an open bar, and RM cigars. Final selections are confirmed closer to the event.

How are cigars selected?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: By profile, including strength, flavor, and overall experience, to ensure quality and variety.

What matters most every year?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Hospitality. Every guest should feel valued and acknowledged.

What do you feel looking out?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Gratitude and responsibility.

What is Blue & Gold Week?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: A series of events — including golf, gatherings, and the gala — designed to build toward the mission.

What is the Golf Invitational?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: An environment where relationships form naturally and often develop into long-term support.

What surprises first-time guests?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: The scale, production quality, and unity of purpose.

Why Philadelphia?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Because it is a city defined by both deep history and significant need.

Who attends?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Business leaders, entrepreneurs, supporters, and cigar enthusiasts.

What turns a guest into a sponsor?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: A personal connection to the mission and confidence in measurable impact.

Who keeps coming back?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: A guest who initially attended out of curiosity but remained because the mission became personally meaningful. Each year deepens their sense of connection and responsibility.

What do people say afterward?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: They reflect on the experience and ask how they can remain involved.

Do families or children attend?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: No minors are present.

Where does the money go?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: To approved programs such as school-supply drives and community initiatives, with documented and traceable impact.

What does a table represent?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Support for the event and contribution to programs after expenses.

What does a sponsorship do?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: It underwrites event costs and can directly fund specific initiatives.

Who decides where help goes?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: The Foundation, in collaboration with community partners, based on documented need.

What has grown over time?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: The ability to organize larger and more structured initiatives.

What would doubling impact require?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Sustained sponsorship, stronger systems, and measurable delivery capacity.

This is a young foundation. It is run by a man who also runs a cigar company, in the years before the machinery of a large charity exists — no endowment, no development department, no fundraising staff. What that means in practice is unusual, and it is worth saying plainly: at this stage, a single serious supporter does not add to the total. A single serious supporter multiplies it.

That is not true of the large, established charities most of us give to, where a donation joins a river. Here, one table, one sponsorship, one introduction to the right partner changes what the Foundation can attempt next season. There are readers of this magazine who spend on two boxes a year what would visibly change this Foundation’s capacity. That is not a rebuke. It is a rate of exchange, and it is unusually favourable at this precise moment in this Foundation’s life. In ten years it will not be possible to matter this much for this little.

When is the next gala?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: June 19, 2027, at The Union League Golf Club at Torresdale in Philadelphia. Availability must be confirmed directly.

How can someone attend or sponsor?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Due to limited availability, participation is coordinated directly through RM.

What can someone do from anywhere?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Donate, sponsor, connect partners, or share the mission.

What matters beyond money?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Time, mentorship, skills, and professional connections.

What should a reader do next?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Take one concrete action — support, connect, or engage.

And a final message?

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: Do not wait until access is no longer available. This is not only an event; it is an opportunity to participate in work that continues long after the evening ends.

PETER STEFANIC

Someone will read this and find something distasteful about cigars, dinner jackets and an open bar paying for school supplies. I understand the reflex. I do not share it.

Money moves where people gather, and people gather where the evening is good. You can have an evening that gives nothing back, or you can have exactly the same evening and turn it into a school year for a child who has never owned anything of their own. Both nights cost the guest the same. Only one of them is still doing something in September, when the mornings turn cold and a nine-year-old walks into a classroom with a full bag instead of an empty one.

We belong to a hobby built on patience. We think nothing of the fact that the tobacco in our hands was planted by a man who could not be certain he would live to see it smoked, then aged for years by people whose names we will never learn. We already understand giving something to a process whose reward arrives long after the work is done. This is the same principle, applied to a child.

That is what June is. Not charity in the sad, dutiful sense of the word, but the best possible use of a good night. And the only people who will never see that room are the ones the whole thing is for.

PETER STEFANIC

A last word.

Go back to the child at the start of this report, both arms over an empty bag, having worked out that asking makes things worse. Then picture the room on the nineteenth of June: the lighting, the music, the smoke rising in a ballroom at Torresdale, and a few hundred people who have understood that the two things are connected.

This is a young foundation, run by a man who also runs a cigar company, in the years before the machinery of a large charity exists — no endowment, no development office, no fundraising staff. What that means in practice is worth saying plainly: at this stage, one serious supporter does not add to the total. One serious supporter multiplies it. Not the way it works at the large, established charities most of us give to, where a donation joins a river. Here, one table, one sponsorship, one introduction to the right partner changes what can be attempted next season. In ten years it will not be possible to matter this much for this little.

If you can be in Philadelphia in June, be in Philadelphia in June. Take a table if you can, and bring the people you would normally bring to dinner. If you cannot travel, the Foundation takes sponsorship, partners, mentorship and professional connections from anywhere in the world, and it needs all four.

The Foundation also takes donations directly, at zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/rm-for-change. It runs on Zeffy, which takes no cut, so the whole amount goes to the work, and it issues a tax receipt. The form allows a one-off gift, but it also allows a monthly one, and if you have read this far you already know why that matters more. The single most important thing the Foundation named was consistent adults who show up repeatedly. A monthly line is the version of that someone far from Philadelphia can actually give.

And if you do one thing after finishing this, make it the concrete one. Give, or write to RM, this week — while you are still holding what you have just read. Interest fades by Thursday. Decisions do not.

— Peter Stefanic, editor, VDG Cigars

RM Foundation — Blue & Gold. The next gala is June 19, 2027, at The Union League Golf Club at Torresdale, Philadelphia. Attendance and sponsorship are arranged directly through RM. Donations: zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/rm-for-change

Disclosure: VDG Cigars has no financial relationship with the Roberto Martinez Foundation and receives nothing from donations made through this article. Donations are handled by Zeffy and go directly to the Foundation, which issues its own receipt.