Timoteo draws its inspiration from the life of Timothy in the Bible, whom the apostle Paul mentored as a next-generation leader of the church. Just as Paul believed in modeling the love and power of the gospel to young Timothy, Timoteo seeks to mentor and disciple the youth of Philadelphia using sports as a mutual passion and playing field for lessons to emerge. The Spanish version of Timothy’s name, Timoteo, only seemed appropriate in representing the strong Latino community present in Kensington where Timoteo was birthed.
Bill Campbell, an elder at Bethel Temple Community Church, founded Timoteo as a ministry of the church.
The first season of Timoteo Flag Football began. Twelve leaders from three churches (Bethel Temple, Light House and Urban Hope) created six teams with twelve coaches and over 40 youth.
The league grew to 10 teams. Church partnerships were expanded; each team had their own church sponsor. As the league grew, unity among the churches grew, having a positive impact on the Kensington community.
The leaders created a young adult league called Paulo K.O.H.L. (Kensington ‘Old Head’ League) for 180 young men who had either aged out of the Youth League or were new participants from the community. The goal of this league was to develop “Pauls” to mentor young “Timothys.”
Bill Campbell left the ministry after feeling called to serve overseas. A team of five people stepped up to lead Timoteo, moving operations from Bethel Temple to a local community-based organization in Kensington called The Simple Way.
The leaders began to see a need to support educational excellence and provide employment opportunities for the youth. To this end they created over 40 jobs ranging from summer camp coaches, field managers, statisticians, cameramen, and other game day jobs. They also began a partnership with Esperanza College, a city based campus of Eastern University, which has empowered several youth from the program to attend college.
Timoteo launched Summer Day Camp for children ages 10-15 in the community. Each summer, 8 youth leaders (ages 16-17) work as camp counselors where they teach football skills and provide mentorship to approximately 60 younger children.
Timoteo moved their offices to the Teen Haven building on Broad Street in North Philadelphia.
Timoteo became its own independent nonprofit organization receiving their official 501c3 operating status. Nes Espinosa officially became the new Executive Director, and Timoteo has grown to include 50 coaches of twelve teams mentoring over 250 youth, receiving support from eleven churches.
Rev. Rob Whitmire became the Executive Director as Nes Espinosa started up his own company called, Goodlands Construction. This year was very exciting as Timoteo started up basketball leagues and they began offering opportunities for females in the league to be apart.
Timoteo moved operations into 1300 West Hunting Park Avenue. We also launched the Timoteo Basketball league with the assistance of Esperanza USA.
We were able to sell the building we received from Teen Haven to help our organization move forward.
We received a United Service Foundation grant which allowed us to hire our first Director of Development, Gabriel Wang-Herrera. We also held our first combined coaches retreat with our brother ministry, 10:12 Sports.