Join the Team
Team One.27 offers several practical ways to get involved:
- Join a Team Partner Community.
- Learn about our mission.
- Purchase Inspired Art with proceeds to Team One.27.
- Donate to our cause.
- Pray with us.
- Sponsor a child.
- Become a Team partner.
- Participate in a “Future Vision” project.
Join a Team Partner Community: TeamOne.27 has its financial office in West Chester, Ohio and it’s ministry base in West Lawn, Pennsylvania. In addition, there are established groups of partners in Connecticut, Ohio, and Vermont as well as individual supporters from all over. For a full list of established locations and communities to get involved with, see our “Partners” link.
Learn about our mission: We believe we have been “adopted” by this beautiful Family of orphans in Haiti and the church that has organically grown up around them to care for their needs. Half of our mission is to gather the resources they need to maintain and expand the ministry in Haiti, but the other half is to share the spiritual riches and unparalleled faith of this Family of Haiti. We have much to learn from their example and their experiences, so please read through the information on our site, talk with our partners, watch the videos, and look at pictures to catch a vision of the story in which we are being written. We pray that you too might realize that you have a part to play, and step forward to be enfolded in this incredible expression of God’s Kingdom here on earth.
Purchase Inspired Art with proceeds to Team One.27 Bryn Gillette, founding member of Team One.27, began his engagement with the needs in Haiti by offering to employ his artistic passion to raise awareness and funds for Haiti. There are well over 125 inspired works of art to date on his website “www.artbybryn.com” where 50% or more of the proceeds from each sale go directly to our Family in Haiti via Team One.27. Click Inspired Art to see the work.
Donate: Financial gifts can be given now via check or online through Paypal. See our “Donate” page for all the pertinent information. We are also currently working to “Fill the Bus,” a 72-passenger refurbished school bus that has been donated to Team One.27 and will be boated to Haiti as a virtual shipping container full of needed materials. For a list of requested goods and more information on this project, click on the “Fill the Bus” link.
Pray: We have a Heavenly Father who cares for our needs, has every resource available to Him, and welcomes the inspired requests of our hearts as we abide in Jesus (John 15). We know God’s heart is for us as Family members to meet the needs of our Haitian brothers and sisters with His resources that have been entrusted to us (our time, our money, our compassion). Pray in a posture of total availability to the Lord to see what He is asking you to do. Pray for the desperate needs of our Haitian Family to be met (and recognize that God may answer this prayer through you and I), and pray that each person who engages with this mission would encounter the Living God who loves us and has called us as ONE body to serve one another. *We want the backbone of our ministry to be prayer, because we believe the Head of our ministry is Christ Jesus, not us!
Sponsor a Child: For all the information regarding how to sign up to sponsor a child, click on the “Child Sponsorship” link. We are initiating a child sponsorship program for those who want to give amounts in direct relation to the needs of our children. While the money won’t go directly to one child while others go in need beside them (it will go to a collective pool for the entire ministry), we have calculated the amount it costs to meet the need of one of the children annually. Since there are currently around 160 orphans in the care of our Family in Haiti, we hope to find 160 sponsors to shoulder the need as a community. As the number of children we are able to help in Haiti grows, we believe that new sponsors will step forward to meet the need and current sponsors will increase the portion they help carry. For information regarding child sponsorship, contact Mark Gillette at mark@teamone27.org.
Become a Team Partner: Team One.27 desires to partner and network with the many pre-existing resources that are already dedicated to serving Haiti. From individual partners who will promote this ministry in their own communities, to corporations and ministries providing services, we want to create a network to meet all of the needs of our Haitian Family. On a corporate level, we are looking for partners equipped to provide medical coverage, food supplies, clean water resources, alternative power (solar, etc.), international transportation, shipment of hard goods overseas, small business and educational opportunities for our older Family members in Haiti, etc.
We want informed partners who are passionate about the work and capable of testifying to the legitimate need and worthy work in Haiti. Therefore, for individual partners we encourage and provide many annual opportunities to go and experience the work first-hand. While it is far more practical and efficient stewardship to carry out construction projects by employing local labor, we believe it is invaluable for key partners to meet the Family, experience the community of faith in Haiti, and to bring professional expertise to their needs when applicable. In many ways, it is as much or more for the blessing and inspiration of we who travel down to Haiti than for any blessing we ourselves bring that we make these regular trips.
Participate in a “Future Vision” project: We have several long-term empowerment initiatives that are aimed to transition the focus of our ministry from short-term emergency care to long-term sustainability and empowerment. Join our conversations and prayers toward this end on our blog, pray with us and share your own experience and insights, or choose from the list of existing “Future Vision” projects with which your resources can help. Our “Future Vision” link with all the information about these initiatives is still under construction, but here’s a taster to give you an idea of these projects:
- Reliable transportation for the ministry and for large groups of children.
- Excellent medical care for our Family and for their community wherever possible, through local resources and foreign partner’s visits.
- A library and computer center in each “Home of Blessing” (currently there are 3).
- A permanent “Home of Blessing” in the Cayes region to meet the needs of our orphans in this region and to be poised to expand our outreach in this needy area.
- A permanent second home just for the boys in the Diquini neighborhood (30+ boys are currently living in a rental space too small for their needs down the street from Daniel’s primary “Home of Blessing”).
- Land and construction for a church building for Daniel to accommodate his rapidly expanding home church which is now hosting well over 100 locals in addition to the 120 children in the Diquini area outside in their front yard.
- Vocational training and educational sponsorship for the older children.
- Sustainable small business loans to empower the Family and equip them to be self- sustaining and an economic blessing to their communities, providing needed local services.
- Higher education grants for graduating seniors.
- And many more to come!