Meet Alejandro Pou

Alejandro, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Growing up in Miami, athletics was a big part of my life. It provided a outlet for a big kid with a lot of energy and free time on his hands; a structured environment that taught discipline, accountability, fortitude and the meaning of ‘Teamwork.’ Most importantly, it introduced me to communities and demographics that I otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be exposed to. Sports removed me from the comfortable and secluded bubble I lived in and exposed me to the real world. And through sports, I developed relationships with people and communities I would’ve never been exposed to at such an early age — relationships I’ve maintained and nurtured to this day.

I began playing organized football for the first time during my freshman year, at Coral Gables Senior High School. During these years, I met and developed a strong relationship with the West Coconut Grove Community. This community was responsible for the majority of talent on our team. While being a tiny low-income community, it produced dozens of professional athletes and continues to do so to this day. During my senior year, I was fortunate enough to earn a full athletic scholarship to continue my football career at the University of Miami. I credit this accomplishment to my passion for the game, my upbringing and the support I received from my coaches, teachers, counselors and teammates.

While at UM, student-athletes were encouraged to participate in ‘community outreach’ with an organization of their choice. Mentoring children was the most appealing to me, so I spent the next four years volunteering with several organizations/schools that fostered at-risk children from disadvantaged communities.

This led me to develop long lasting relationships with those children, many of which are now adults, that I have maintained to this day. Upon graduation, I took it upon myself to continue to nurture these relationships as well as build new ones within the same communities.

By 2011 I had two children; Chloe age nine and Nathan age eight. A light went off… I knew what I wanted to do with my life and the legacy I wanted to leave behind. In 2015 I decided how I was going to do it.

With the help and guidance of close friends, I soon founded The Home Team. At the time, I decided that based on my background and my platform as a former student-athlete and product of the Miami-Dade Public School System, I would provide a free mentoring program to the children of the West Coconut Grove Community. The objective was to provide a program to create and enforce the ‘student-athlete’ mentality early and often. The reasoning was that sports is the number one outlet for children in the underserved communities in Miami-Dade County yet, the value of academics and how they coincide doesn’t become a priority until it’s oftentimes too late.

Since, our program has evolved to include STEM, dance, art, life skills, anti-bully and cultural programs. While we recognize that sports is the most popular outlet and interest for the children we serve, we are passionate about offering an inclusive program for all in hopes of identifying a ‘tiny genius’ in each one of our children.

Fast forward to today, we have provided free after school programs to over 2000 children while partnering with Elementary, Middle, High Schools and Community Centers in the South Miami, Coconut Grove and Coral Gables Communities. In addition, we have provided dozens of field trips, holiday festivities and toy drives for over 2000 other children. These programs and events have been supported by over 200 volunteers.

Often as funders, we look for signs of early adopters and early success, so let me toss in the fact that two of the Miami-Dade County public schools we have worked within the past few years have recently improved to earn an overall ‘A’ school rating since we’ve begun collaborating with them. In addition, we’ve had over two dozen student-athletes earn academic/athletic scholarships to attend college during this time. It does not require risk or thinking to see that this simple program generates profound results.

We love the simplicity of the idea of these programs which is an executive overview takes adolescent kids, including girls (!) who would likely never get the opportunity to showcase their talents to the level that they can get full scholarships to great universities, assuming we also do an excellent job on the academics side and college placement program with insider tracking – which we do. Several of our participants are going to college next year on full scholarships and of course, they are “first generation” to ever attend college. The program fits within our family mentality of change a kid, which changes a family unit, which changes a neighborhood. So simple yet so profound.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Like anything else, it has been and continues to be a big learning curve. Initially, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do yet understood that there would be a lot of obstacles along the way. And even more that I hadn’t considered. Learning to accept ‘No’ has been my biggest struggle. Essentially, I’m lobbying for those that need support and don’t know where to begin. Relying predominantly on donations, contributions and volunteers to continue and maintain operations and programming is always a challenge.

While most businesses offer their ‘clients’ goods or services in exchange for compensation, we have to continually find new ways to encourage our ‘supporters’ to contribute out of the kindness of their hearts, or as I like to say, investing in their Personal Capital.

Please tell us about your organization.
We identified the current need for an organization to provide a structured, school-based program to supplement students’ public education experiences using qualitative evidence, collected through a combination of feedback from community stakeholders, teachers, school administrators and students, direct observation of current after-school programming, and an analysis of best practices found in other communities and programs. We learned that students had limited experience with community members representing activities that increase children’s’ opportunities for success: accomplished academic leaders, talented sports representatives and successful business people. Operations began in January 2016, through a partnership with Miami-Dade public schools and Community Centers, including Francis S. Tucker Elementary School, GW Carver Elementary School Ponce De Leon Middle School, Coral Gables Senior High School, Shake-A-Leg Miami and the Gibson-Bethel Community Center.

These programs, free to all participants, continue today and, due to popularity, have created opportunities for additional programming. Our program is unique as it’s framed by behavior change theory resulting from behavioral economics, calling for incentivizing full participation to attain maximum benefits. Incentivizing behavior change is an effective means for achieving expected changes when individuals are less likely to be intrinsically motivated or to have role models for what that behavior change represents.

Since inception in January 2016, we’ve assisted over 2000 students, supported by over 200 volunteers, with half of those students have completed a full year with a minimum of absences. Last academic year, we began providing study halls, tutoring, athletic recruiting services to advance student-athletes beyond high school and into college in addition to our STEM Programs that include robotics, coding, environmental science as well as our anti-bullying and sports programs and a cultural empowerment program.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Personally, success is demonstrated as the ability to leverage experience to make other’s journeys better while being able to share something encouraging with them each day. The Home Team uses the following to measure the success of our children and ourselves:
– Attentive
– Enquiring
– Completes assignments/follows directions
– Makes insightful contributions to discussions

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thehometeam.org
• Phone: 3053056093
• Email: alexpou@thehometeam.org
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/thehometeammiami
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thehometeammiami
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/HomeTeamMiami
• Other: The Home Team Miami