Shine Is LIVE On Squarespace
Lovelyn Palm and her family have been connected with Uganda after adopting many of their kids from there and from living in-country for 15 months straight! They decided to start a foundation that connects families in need in Uganda to people willing to partner with them in the States. Shine is a village empowerment initiative that seeks to preserve families, prevent orphans, and proclaim the gospel in rural Uganda. They came to us for a Restyle with the Poppy Template hoping for an earthy, organic and informative website design that people could feel connected with!
"We truly all have been gifted in different ways. Collaboration is infinitely better than competition or trying to do something strictly on my own strength."
– Lovelyn Palm
CHECK OUT OUR Q&A WITH LOVELYN ABOUT HER RESTYLE
From managing time between family and work sharing the heart behind their company, Lovelyn gave Go Live HQ amazing insight.
GO LIVE: WHERE DID YOUR PASSION FOR THIS PROJECT START?
LOVELYN: It was always really important that we stay connected to our children’s home countries, so we’ve taken several trips there so we could keep connections with the culture and with friends there. We found out about our newest little girl who was born in Uganda last March. When we went to adopt her, we decided to take our family for 3 months just to spend time with family and to finish her adoption. When we arrived there, we found out that adoption law had changed during our adoption, and that we needed to live in-country for 12 months to be able to adopt her. Our little girl was there, and we were with her, and so we just stayed.
We decided to build a house there because we found perfect land, and we wanted to a place for our children to have roots there too. As we lived and got to know our neighbors, we realized that many of them weren’t in school, they didn’t have shoes, they weren’t eating every day, they didn’t have clean water. That’s really where Shine was born out of a love for our neighbors and the people that God had put in our lives. We felt that it wasn’t right that they didn’t have these basic necessities.
We wanted to partner with them and have our friends here in the Western world to be able to partner with our friends and family there to help empower them.
GO LIVE: WHAT IS THE HARDEST LESSON YOU’VE LEARNED IN STARTING THIS PROJECT?
LOVELYN: I think the hardest thing is just balancing time. It’s something that we’re so passionate about, but we also have a big, busy family. We’ve always told them that we never want to sacrifice our family for our ministry. That’s actually one of the biggest reasons I wanted the website to be professionally done because we wanted the professionals to do it and not waste our time doing something and not doing it well.
GO LIVE: WHAT ARE SOME TIPS YOU HAVE FOR LEARNING HOW TO BALANCE YOUR TIME?
LOVELYN: We’re learning as we go, but we try to block off time. We’re making it a priority that during this time, we work really well, and then you can focus on other things during other times, which lets us work well and work more efficiently. Otherwise, I would always want to be doing something.
GO LIVE: WHAT DO YOU WISH SOMEONE WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU WHEN YOU WERE STARTING OUT?
LOVELYN: I wish someone would have told me that I really could do this even though I am a busy mom of 11 children. It seemed overwhelming and I think that left me frozen for a while. Yet, something that has become so apparent to me in building this ministry is that we truly all have been gifted in different ways. Collaboration is infinitely better than competition or trying to do something strictly on my own strength.
From things like our hiring Go Live HQ for our website launch to our Ugandan staff who can reach families there in a way that I, as a Westerner, never could, to utilizing a friend's photography skills in order to get things done well, it is definitely possible when we do what we are gifted in and humbly reach out to others for the other tasks.
GO LIVE: WHAT HAVE YOU GAINED FROM STARTING THIS?
LOVELYN: We’ve gained the joy of being able to live out what God placed on our hearts for this ministry, and just being able to see these families empowered in a way that they can not only have their needs met, but they are doing it themselves. Yes, we’re partnering with them, but we’re very passionate about using their gifting that they already have, they just maybe don’t have the resources to do it. Instead of giving hand outs, we’re trying to give them a hand up in helping them do what God already created and gave them the gifting and talent to do. It’s really neat to watch them be able to do that and provide for their families.
GO LIVE: WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO TAKE YOUR BRAND FOR A RESTYLE?
LOVELYN: We wanted the professionals to do it so we used our time and resources efficiently instead of always having to fix things or things not done well. I want the website to be a place that is beautiful and people feel like they’re part of the Shine family, and that they know exactly how they can get involved. As soon as I found Go Live HQ, I knew that you all could do that for us and that would be a good use of our resources in order to grow the ministry in the way that we hope it will.