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“When I was 14-years-old, on the first day of my first job, I promised myself that I would grow up to be rich. I had many reasons for wanting to have a lot of money, but more than anything it was out of fear of not having enough. I grew up very poor in Hilversum, the Netherlands, and I never wanted to live like that again.”

“With the image of opulence before me, I knew what I wanted and I formulated goals for myself that would come true years later. One objective was: I will own a Porsche before I’m 30. But this wasn’t the only promise I made myself, it wasn’t all about my ego. I wanted to have a large family and to be the best father in the world. More than anything, I wanted always to be with my children.”

In 2011, I wrote a book in Spanish, titled How I Stopped Being An Idiot (Cuando dejé de ser un idiota), to explain how I arrived at the concept of Teaming. In that book I wanted to write about some of the humorous experiences in my life as well as the difficulties, because I believe we have to laugh at ourselves if we are going to grow and change. But my commitment to social change through a network of micro donations is very serious and real, and today, thousands of lives have been changed, one person at a time, one donation at a time. This is a book about that change.

Teaming was born thanks to my oldest daughter, Mónica. In her first few months of life the possibilities for her survival were minimal. Doctors revised their prognosis several times, going mostly from bad to hopeless, but we were living from one miracle of medical history to the next. When she was a year old I got in contact with various foundations and NGOs that give assistance to children like Mónica, and I witnessed again the commitment of professionals and volunteers that I had come to know in the hospital where she was born.

In all my work with multinational corporations, including my own company, I had never seen people working with such joy and passion. It occurred to me that any executive would be envious to see the effectiveness of a team working together like this, generating so much positive energy. Yet I understood that there were many good ideas for helping people and urgent projects that could not be put into effect due to lack of economic resources. This is the reality of the majority of foundations and NGOs.

But Teaming doesn’t have to do with this familiar scenario. Whenever people talk about a solidarity project like this, one tends to think in terms of a traditional charitable foundation. When I speak about my daughter, Mónica, people naturally assume I am talking about such an organization for disabled children.

The difference is that Teaming is about none of these things. There are no executives and no complicated employee manuals. There is no bank account, no endowment, and no overhead costs. Teaming is an idea that is free and that can be summarized by saying “micro donations in teams,” and yet even though the idea of people gathering together for a common purpose is nothing new, what takes time to tell is the story of those people, how they organized, and what they have done with a simple idea. You and I are some of those people.

Knowing that foundations and NGOs need money to accomplish their purpose, I tried to figure out a way that in a company, whoever wanted to do it, could voluntarily donate €1 a month from his or her salary and get together with other people to decide where that money should go. In actuality, this amount is symbolic because no one thinks they can do anything with a single euro, and a foundation cannot encourage people to sign up and donate no more than 1€ a month.

In fact, banks charge more than that in monthly services! And with 12€ one can still go out to a movie or eat a light lunch. The idea is to make the best of the impulse that all of us have when we want to help, when we have the intention of giving during a particular time, over the holidays, on the anniversary of a loved one, or when misfortune strikes someone close to us. Naturally, we know that life will go on and we will be so busy that our good intentions will fade, and perhaps that initial feeling of solidarity may turn into disappointment. It is nobody’s fault, but this is the way that our society functions most of the time. And so, the economic part of Teaming takes care of depositing that money automatically into the company’s bank account. Some companies decide to match these funds, but even if they don’t, the first part of Teaming is done.

The second part of Teaming is the most beautiful to me. It reminds many of the time when they were children at school, and someone would start a collection for someone who needed it. Other people remember “rent parties,” or the kindness of neighbors who got together anonymously to help a family in need. In this part of Teaming, people decide where their money will go for six or twelve months, or for however long they prefer. And the change that takes place in people’s hearts when this happens is… indescribable.

Teaming, then, is completely transparent, democratic, voluntary, and absolutely anyone can begin the process. In fact, things move from the bottom up. I don’t much like the concept of above and below, but I think that sometimes it is better to speak plainly, with practical examples instead of theoretical concepts. This is why in this book we tell the story of how one company began their Teaming project, one of the first companies in Spain, and I know that from this description, anyone will be able to conceive of a way to make it work in their workplace.

Having come all this way, wondering whether my daughter had one more day to live, and then a few days, and then perhaps a week, has definitely changed the way I feel. I am no longer afraid. Now that I work at a project that truly makes me happy, that I work towards a dream, I have genuine friends who are not motivated out of self-interest. And best of all, my work feels the same as my free time.

Jil Van Eyle, Barcelona, August 10, 2012