Teamwork Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit organization which manages the basketball program known as the "New York Gauchos", founded 43 years ago as an adjunct of the Westside YMCA by Louis d' Almeida, an advertising executive who had come as a young man from Argentina to seek education in the United States. He later found that education at Yale University.

Teamwork Foundation, Inc. at first glance, might seem to be a strange appellation to give a program concerned with helping a segment of inner city children for whom so many programs have failed. Yet that name is at the very heart of a program that has become unique in its success during its more then 40 years of life.

Because of his fluency in Spanish, Lou came to feel somewhat at home in Spanish Harlem, and further, an interest in sports led him to become active with the local YMCA and eventually to helping a fledgling basketball team composed primarily of Black and Hispanic kids. The program really began when Lou started providing T-shirts for a team playing at the Westside YMCA. When their coach moved away from the area, one of the players asked Lou to take on the job and he did.

The young men who composed the Gaucho teams in the early years ranged in age from 14 to 18, and the great majority were from areas of Harlem and the South Bronx. In a short time the program grew from a couple of teams to over 15 teams comprising 250 young people and competing in dozens of leagues throughout the city of New York including PAL, CYO, YMCA and church leagues. Lou worked with the young people, soon enlisted volunteer coaches, and discovered that his one on one relationship with the boys was producing something different. Here were extremely troubled kids, angry, arrogant, trouble-makers, many from broken homes, having difficulty in school, united in a love of basketball, a love of being a part of a winning team ... the Gauchos. He noticed, too, that for most of them it was their first acceptable taste of rules and regulations, of working off their anger at the world in a constructive way. And he noticed something else.

Through trips he organized, taking his teams to out of the city schools and colleges to play against freshmen and junior varsity teams, he saw these boys respond to the world at large. No longer were they bounded exclusively by the geographic limitations of the inner city; they began to get a taste of another world, something, perhaps, to aspire to. After all, the major aspiration of the inner city is freedom; mostly by and through money, seldom honestly obtained. Now, for many, college became a goal, and a possibility. The program soon expanded to include younger players and girls.

To date, the program has involved some 10,000 young people, and thousands have actually gone through the entire program, up to college age. Almost 100% of these have gotten into college. Not all former Gauchos become All-American, nor wish to be, but the Gaucho program has given them the opportunity they would not have other wise had ... the chance to a piece of the American dream. And that is all-American.

Perhaps the success of this program has come through its simplicity - and its single-minded approach. Yet the idea behind it is almost as old as civilization itself. It should come as no major revelation that throughout history sports have played an invaluable role in shaping young people, preparing them for the future, giving them the basics of societal living . . . discipline, pride, goals, rules, 'even law and ' order. And the thrill and the chance of achievement, of success, and of winning.

Sports, then, have always played an important part of the education of youth. Football and baseball have been an indigenous part of the traditional American scene of growing up. But they require unique space; they are the sports of the suburb and the country. What of the city? After all, there are no playing fields of Eton in New York.

Basketball is the game of the streets, of the inner city. It can literally be played on the streets, and within the gyms of the Y's, the schools, the churches. It is something that the young people of the city can connect with immediately. It is no accident that even an average basketball player from Harlem can compete with the players in the major schools in the country. It is the "art" that these young people perform.

So d'Almeida found he could connect with these kids through their art, through the one possible connecting link between generations, races and economics. As the Gauchos won more and more games, leagues, championships, more and more young people wanted to be a part of the team. But to be a part of the team, and to stay a part of the Gaucho program, they had to maintain certain grade averages in school, bringing their report cards to their coaches on a monthly basis.

Many who would have otherwise dropped out of school stayed in, in order to stay in the Gaucho program. Further, they had to stay "straight", no drugs, no jail. No heavy authoritarian hand was laid on their lives; they simply were informed, knew and absorbed the fact that to be a continuing part of the team required them to behave in certain ways The discipline was ready self-imposed and maintained. The only way it can be.

There have been rewards beyond being a part of a successful and winning team. Lou arranged to take several teams on a performing trip to Israel; then later, the Dominican Republic. Both trips were underwritten by corporate contributions. On one occasion the Gauchos were invited to participate in the National High School Basketball competition in Provo, Utah. They went ... and won.

This program was made possible initially by Lou himself, but as the program grew he found his own resources severely limited. So he went to friends in industry, to relatives, to others from whom he could beg and borrow the necessary funds to make the Gaucho program continue. Over the years the team moved from one rented gymnasium in upper Manhattan to another and expanded to include additional teams. Finally, in 1987, the Gauchos gymnasium at 478 Gerard Avenue in the South Bronx was purchased with the help of a benefactor, Jim Courier, who tragically died a few years later.

As programs go, the amount needed on a yearly basis is small. In terms of the results obtained, the needed funds are minuscule. As one of d’Almeida’s helpful friends stated, "I‘d rather see a boy coming up to me with a basketball in his hand than a gun". To some extent, that's the choice. Today, the program is run by a combination of 2 paid staff, part time Coaches, parents and volunteers. We are excited about the future. We have a great partner in Nike, great support from our founding donors, and more and more new families coming in to join our program every day.