Joining the Network

GIHN has three formal relationships with local churches and faith communities: Host, Co-Host, and Support.

The Executive Summary

Host Community
Host Communities are the key component to GIHN. We work with communities of varying faiths and backgrounds to host up to five families a week. The Host Communities provide them with a safe place the sleep, breakfast and dinner, showers, laundry, and transportation to and from the day center. Roll-away beds are moved between Host Communities on Sunday with our van & trailer. Volunteers set up private or semi-private rooms for each guest family and interact with the children and their families throughout the week.

Co-Host Community
Co-Host Communities do not use their facilities to serve GIHN families, but they can be just as involved in the responsibilities as Host Communities. Co-Host Communities partner with a Host Community to provide volunteers and supplies for the host week. The more, the merrier!

Support Community
Help GIHN with prayer and finances. God provides!

Host Communities

Each night GIHN guest families stay in a Host Community's facility, almost exclusively churches. These Host Communities take turns sheltering all the guests (max. 14) from either the Greensboro or High Point day center. We call a day center and its associated faith communities a Rotation, because the churches rotate the responsibility of caring for the guess.

GIHN's Program Director communicates with the Host's Primary Coordinator about the number folks in the Network, about the ages of children, and about any special needs or considerations for the guests.

The Host Community's Primary Coordinator leads a team of assistant coordinators for the week. They help solicit volunteers to take little pieces of the big effort to shelter, feed, and tend the guest families for the week. It's a lot like a arranging shepherds and under-shepherds for a little flock. Each day someone needs to drive the GIHN van to and from the day center to the host facility. Other folks prepare and serve dinner. Someone shepherds the flock overnight, preferably one man and one woman. Finally, someone stocks the day center pantry with afterschool snacks for the children, lunch supplies for house-bound guests (moms with little ones and those looking for work), and for weekend nibbling.

On Sundays a little crew either sets up or takes down. Before services Sunday morning at the current host facility, the little "homes" that were created in Sunday School rooms or nurseries for the week are returned to their normal state. At the new host facility, other Sunday school rooms, nurseries, or small conference rooms are turned into "homes," one for each guest family. GIHN has a trailer for each day center's van to transport its beds to the next host facility.

Hosting for a week is not complicated, but it does take 30 - 50 folks to make it light work all the way around. Most Host Communities share the work with one or more Co-Hosts Communities. If your congregation isn't quite up to the task of hosting, please consider becoming a Co-Host.

Co-Host Communities

These churches and faith communities do everything a Host Community does except provide the facility. There's Primary Coordinator who works with the Host Primary Coordinator to help get volunteers matched up to tasks. It's a great opportunity for churches to partner up.

Support Communities

Support Churches include GIHN in their formal budget and make annual, quarterly, or monthly contributions. Some also have designated fund-raising events for GIHN. A few have relationships and influence with a regional diocese, convencation, synod, presbytery, or other heirarchy which has the ability to make grants and to bestow benevolence. They advocate for GIHN to those sources, too.

There may be GIHN volunteers within a Support Community, but a Support Community may not necessarily participate in hosting GIHN guests.

Finally, we suggest that the first and most important place to start in supporting GIHN is prayer. We are people of faith who know its power. We covet your prayers for the children and their parents, for the Network of churches, for the volunteers, and for GIHN staff and leadership.