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"Teaming is a simple, but powerful story of how leveraging individuals’ consciousness and creative thinking through teamwork can generate great positive impacts and results for people, business and society. As Jil van Eyle, Teaming’s visionary creator, usually says “to define Teaming, one should start by explaining what Teaming is NOT about”. So, Teaming is not an NGO, nor a foundation, nor a company, there is no bank account, and Teaming does not receive money. Teaming is simply an IDEA and as a simple IDEA it can be spelled out in just four words, as Jil says: “micro donations in teams”, which put into practice can produce significant positive contributions to people’s life.
In simple terms, one can describe the innovation underlying Teaming, as an original-creative way to organize an interrelation of the key elements of this solidarity idea. Let’s start by looking at these elements. First, there are people; perhaps the most important dimension as Jill says “…Teaming is all about People”. People who voluntarily make small donations, 1 euro or 1 dollar or 1 peso each. Then, there is the company or organization or club or project to which these people belong to. Usually, the organization facilitates the collection of those donations, and frequently the organization itself contributes by doubling it, tripling it or increasing it in order to augment the overall contribution. Then, there is a good cause. That is a person or group in need, or a foundation, or a social project or solidarity initiative, to which the sum-donation is provided. But also very significant is the way this good cause is selected in Teaming, as it is not something imposed by the organization nor by senior management nor by any “distant” entity. The “good cause” is actually selected by proposals and agreement from all Teaming participants. Therefore, these contributions are seen by most participants as a direct-difference they make to those they decide to contribute to with their donations.
Especially important in Teaming’s innovative approach to helping others is the emergence of a collective consciousness and attitude change which derives from the aggregated contribution of well-organized independent “small” acts of individuals. This is quite transformational for many people, as it discloses a human/sensible-side of colleagues and teammates which without Teaming sometimes does not emerge in organizations, even if the organization itself has a foundation or does do other charitable actions and donations. And on the other end of Teaming are the people being helped, for whom the result of these collaborative donations can open access to charitable resources that in some cases are almost impossible to obtain.
Anyone could imagine how significant difference this access to needed resources can make in those people’s life, but certainly someone who knows how important this can be is Jil van Eyle himself, as he recounts how his life changed, both personally and professionally, when his daughter Monica was born with Hydrocephalus, a serious brain damage, and his subsequent quest to help her through several foundations faced him with numerous difficulties to access resources despite their goodwill. Jill’s own personal transformation, as he experienced and adapted to this profound life-changing event, also produced in him a strong belief and commitment to help other people, and this became the genesis of Teaming, which he originally envisioned as “a project to generate resources, based on teamwork, to help other people”.
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