PUJOLS FAMILY FOUNDATION

COMMUNITY SERVICE AWARD

In 2005, Albert and Deidre Pujols launched the Pujols Family Foundation, which is dedicated to “the love, care and development of people with Down syndrome and their families,” as well as helping the poor in the Dominican Republic. Pujols has taken several trips to the Dominican, by taking supplies as well as a team of doctors and dentists to the poor who need medical care. The Pujols Family Foundation also hosts an annual golf tournament in which members from the Cardinals and others play golf to raise money to send dentists to the Dominican Republic.

PFF_Logo_2Albert Pujols recently gave $70,000 to St. Luke’s Hospital in Chesterfield, Mo., for the opening of a center for adults with Down syndrome. The Albert Pujols Wellness Center for Adults with Down Syndrome will be opening at the hospital’s Desloge Outpatient Center in November.

Pujols designated an award from the Major League Baseball Trust to the center, which will provide wellness resources, including nutrition, exercise, safety and relationships. “Opening a center like this is something my wife and I had talked about since we started the Pujols Family Foundation, and to now have the opportunity to do so is truly a blessing,” Pujols said in a statement to the St. Louis Business Journal.

Pujols has a stepdaughter, Isabella, with Down syndrome. He and his wife, Deidre, started the Pujols Family Foundation in part to help people affected by Down syndrome. “We did not choose Down syndrome. Down syndrome chose us,” Pujols and his wife say on the Pujols Family Foundation’s web site. “This foundation is dedicated to the love, care and development of people with Down syndrome and their families. Our goal is to promote awareness, provide hope and create supportive and memorable events for the families and children who live with Down syndrome.” In the past three years the Pujols Family Foundation has assisted more than 500 families affected by Down syndrome in the greater St. Louis area with programs and events that celebrate the lives of these special children and young adults.

The foundation’s international outreach has brought medical and dental assistance to more than 3,500 impoverished children in the Dominican Republic. The Pujols Family Foundation also recently funded the completion of a vocational school for an orphanage in La Romana, Dominican Republic, where more than 120 children are housed.

In 2009, the Foundation introduced programs such as Project Sound Asleep that delivers beds to impoverished families who have no place to sleep, and Project Wonder Woman, a vocational outreach to the women of Batey Aleman to teach sewing, baking and cosmetology.