The mission of the Creflo Dollar Global Missions (CDGM) department is to “Go where no one else will go and do what no one else will do.” Their work falls under four umbrellas:

We recently sat down with Mari Sawyer, Volunteer Director of the Creflo Dollar Global Missions team, for a deeper dive into the department’s work. Her role is to coordinate the volunteer activities and manage planning and logistics for many of the Global Missions outreach projects.

“You don’t have to have a special skill set to be part of any community outreach or missions trip. It’s really having a willingness and a heart to serve, and stepping out of your comfort zone.”

Aside from the local events that are familiar to most WCCI members, such as the Back to School, Feeding Families, and Christmas Giveaway events, this year, Global Missions’ focus is on homeless outreach. This focus was born out of an idea from one of their volunteer team members, Tiffany Johnson, who has a heart serve the homeless. That’s how some of their local work starts; a team member has a passion for a cause or a need in the community need that they bring to the group, then the group brings in the full support of the team’s logistical and planning support.

Mari learned of the opportunity to provide medical supplies and equipment to Cameroon through Creflo Dollar Global Missions in 2008. “The Holy Spirit placed in my heart to go and help whatever missions were going on,” she said. Her first tasks were administrative filing, creating binders, and sending emails to assist the overall organization. She stepped into her role of coordinating volunteers for Global Missions in response to terrible flooding in Atlanta back in 2009. The West Cobb area, some parts of Atlanta, and Austell felt the impact tremendously, as well as other nearby communities. “We worked from that fall through December on getting clothing, hygiene kits, water, and other items and distributing them alongside the American Red Cross and a few other local organizations.” This volunteer effort became a natural bridge to working with single mothers who needed help providing Christmas gifts for their children.

Then, a catastrophic earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010. Creflo Dollar Global Missions responded with significant financial donations to support temporary housing and help provide heavy construction equipment to remove rubble and damage. By October 2010, a CDGM volunteer team deployed on a missions trip to Haiti, the first of many over five years. “I can’t stress enough that it is a team effort for volunteers to work on the logistics, planning, and collecting donated items that we can take as contributions to various countries,” said Mari. From cash donations to nails, our volunteers availed themselves of the opportunity to serve—to help construct an orphanage and helped build temporary shelter, amongst other projects, in Haiti.