Miami » As the sun begins to set over the palm trees and aging buildings across the street from the St. John Bosco Leadership Learning Center in one of this city's poorest neighborhoods, festive music plays while dozens of children shriek and frolic on the blacktop. Some are armed with bright balloon sculptures from the hired clown. Others jump rope or shoot baskets.

Alonzo Mourning is in their midst, and they can hardly contain their excitement.

The imposing 6-foot-10 former NBA all-star center has come to deliver turkey dinners to families of the underprivileged children as part of his annual "33 Thanksgivings" program, which distributes hundreds of free meals every year throughout the city.

It costs thousands of dollars and requires the help of dozens of volunteers and several major corporate sponsors. But it's only a small part of a burgeoning charitable empire that has made Mourning not only a "beacon of hope" for the community, as one of his benefactors described him, but one of the country's most successful athlete philanthropists and a role model for fellow stars who aspire to contribute more to society than just rebounds.

"I feel like we're placed in this position for a reason, not just to entertain people, running up and down the court," Mourning said. "We're placed in a position to influence others in so many other ways -- so many good ways, and positive ways. And the only way we do that is by becoming active participants in orchestrating a better life for other people."

A philanthropist is born » Not every athlete who puts his name on a charity succeeds is making a real difference. A Salt Lake Tribune analysis of play-run charities found many are fraught with problems (see associated story).

But not every athlete is Mourning.

Having grown up partly in foster homes before graduating from Georgetown University and embarking on his 16-year NBA career and amassing a personal fortune, the 38-year-old has a deep appreciation for those who helped him overcome his early obstacles -- and an unwavering passion for charitable work. Now that he's effectively retired from basketball after coming back from a kidney transplant and winning a championship with the Miami Heat, Mourning spends most of his time managing his nonprofit foundation, Alonzo Mourning Charities.

"He's a visionary," said Lisa Joseph, the foundation's executive director.

It shows in the $6.5 million he has raised in the past decade, and the lengths to which he has gone to contribute. Mourning once donated his entire annual NBA salary -- about $300,000, in the twilight of his career -- to charitable groups, and made a sizeable enough contribution to the St. John Bosco Center to pay the salary of its first teacher.

Foundation employees recalled the day he ordered them to find a way to buy a new house for a single mother left homeless by a hurricane (they did it), and noted that one big project at the moment is raising $300,000 to pay for a liver transplant for a 3-year-old boy in the Bahamas. Mourning also helped create Athletes for Hope, an organization designed to help other professional athletes navigate the challenges of creating a charitable foundation.

"That's truly who he is," Joseph said. "That passion, that's what will drive any foundation."

Yet Mourning's humanitarian zeal did not fully take root until he participated in a charity event for fellow basketball star Magic Johnson in Los Angeles as an NBA rookie in 1992.

"I said to myself, 'Wow, this is amazing. Look at all these lives this man has touched,' " Mourning recalled. "I want to do something like this."

Sure enough, he did.

A neighborhood in need » The corner of NW 3rd Avenue and 14th Street sits far from glistening high rises and multimillion-dollar condos that lend Miami its sexy allure. Until just a few years ago, it featured but a ruddy vacant lot across the street from an expressway whose construction 40 years ago only hastened the crumbling of the once-thriving neighborhood.

Now, however, it is home to a haven.

The Overtown Youth Center is a crowning achievement of AMC. Real-estate developer Martin Magulies built the 18,000-foot educational facility six years ago to help Mourning help disadvantaged children.

It serves 250 children (and about 90 of their parents) with programs designed to help the kids succeed in society as well as school -- all for free in an area where, according to the 2000 Census, only one in 12 children were graduating high school.

"I can't just see that and not do anything about it," Mourning said.

A look at the kids' test scores and report cards shows the effort is succeeding, said Carla Penn, the youth center's director. "We're looking at students who said, 'I never dreamed of going to college' who are now in college, and parents who never had a [general equivalency diploma] who now have GEDs."

The center has been so well received that foundation officials plan to build another in the Bunche Park neighborhood in suburban Miami Gardens, and perhaps another in Newark, N.J., where Mourning played for parts of two seasons for the New Jersey Nets.

A charity's reach » Alonzo Mourning Charities includes more than just the youth center, though.

It also encompasses the Honey Shines Mentoring Program for girls, founded by Mourning's wife, Tracy, while foundation officials are working to bring under its official umbrella Zo's Fund for Life, the charity Mourning created to fight the degenerative kidney disease that forced his own kidney transplant in 2003.

And all of them succeed, Mourning said, for the same reason. "You have to have the right people around you," he said, "who believe in your vision and are just as passionate as you are. ... Your heart has to be in it."

Your head, too.

While some athletes create charitable foundations as a way to employ relatives or an excuse to hold a lavish party, Mourning takes pride in having built his foundation professionally. He has never employed a family member, he said, and directors of his foundation's various arms include city and public school officials, women's and children's advocates and business leaders. His corporate sponsors include Nike, UPS, and Publix grocery stores.

In fact, Publix is where all those turkey dinners came from, delivered by UPS to the cheerful party, where Mirta Fuentes, the Leadership Learning Center's director, takes a break from helping families load up their dinners and pose for photos with Mourning to reflect on what his efforts have meant to her community.

"What would I do," she said, "without Alonzo Mourning in my life?"