Do It Yourself Darlin (DIYD) hosts educational, hands-on DIY home repair workshops for new and veteran homeowners, renters, and everyone in between. Their workshops aim to empower everyone to feel comfortable and confident understanding the components that make up a house while learning basic home repair skills along the way.

Funds from Community Blend will help build bathroom infrastructure for Iyenga Primary School in Tanzania, as well as help fund the Women’s & Youth Entrepreneurship program!

Black Power Initiative (BPI) is partnering with us to expand their Nurture Our Own program. This programming will reduce barriers to accessing nutritional foods and increase food literacy in many of Cincinnati’s Black neighborhoods through food rescue, redistribution, and the development of culturally-conscious recipes and cooking classes.

FAF (Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza) is partnering with us to fund a new biofactory on their main farm. Learnings from this lab will help propagate beneficial fungus and bacteria tailored for each farm around the region.

La Armonia Hermosa is more to us than just the name of a coffee we offer every year; it represents a beautiful harmony of people - producers, roasters, and coffee lovers, intertwined with one another in a journey toward deeper partnership and sustainability.

The Cincinnati Recycling & Reuse Hub is doing much more than just keeping items out of the landfill. They work to increase awareness of the connections among “things,” consumer habits, and harmful environmental consequences by providing a literal hub where almost anything can be recycled or reused. These efforts aim to shift norms and expectations away from disposability and toward sustainability – where the value of an item is judged not only by its immediate utility, but also by its long-term effects on the environment, the economy, and social justice. 

The funding for this modern cowshed program at Heza farm is intended to educate farmers, help grow the existing organic fertilizer program, create a more ecological model of animal care and boost the amount of production that each farmer gets per unit of land.

The West End Community Garden is an urban oasis of abundant fruits and vegetables grown by the community for the community. Operating under the collective umbrella of the Civic Garden Center of Greater Cincinnati, the community garden helps fulfill its vision of ‘a sustainable future for all where environmental and social responsibility drive individual and institutional actions.

This round of Giveback Project funding will go towards replacing the roof of the wet mill/office/collection station and some painting to keep the building protected from the elements. However, it is important that the entire community surrounding the Mwika North project feel supported so we’re also looking forward to this round of funding to do similar building infrastructure improvement to the neighboring Mwika North-East office.

A bike sharing system consisting of 59 stations and over 500 bikes, Red Bike is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to improving community by providing a low-cost, healthy, and green transportation option that makes Greater Cincinnati a more vibrant and connected community.

“Cincy Nice began as a simple idea: create more spaces where we can be ourselves and have fun together.

Our collective popped-up as the Cincy Nice Social House, a community lounge during BLINK 2019—the city’s largest arts and lightestival. We designed a physical space where people could kick back together, make new friends, reconnect with old ones, enjoy good music, food, positive vibes and just feel free to be themselves.”

In a region called Cauca, they have an initiative they’re trying to propagate after seeing success on their estate farms. The idea is to eliminate synthesized chemical additives to the plants and soil and create a bio-fertilizer production facility in the area run by farmers for the community. This has trickle-down effects not only on the health and well-being of the soil and water run-off, but also on the financial sustainability of the community. Farmers can run the production and make secondary income while also being able to offer a less expensive option to their community farmers looking to fertilize their land.

While SFSM gets funding through grants and other partnerships, they rely heavily on donations. Each month they have to spend roughly $3,200 on food/supplies just for the Dining Room program. That is why, SFSM is our local Community Giveback Partner for the first half of 2021, and your giveback funds will help underwrite this expense to directly impact those who are needing nourishing meals especially in this difficult time.

So for this round all of you Community Blend drinkers are helping fund an ENTIRE new classroom for a school. And when we say classroom we truly mean the walls, rafters, desks and all…

Cincinnati's historic West End neighborhood has experienced a long stretch of disenfranchisement common to many of America's cities. Seven Hills Neighborhood Houses is an organization rooted in the West End which offers programs and services that truly improve the quality of life of its neighbors. With the COVID crisis threatening to displace residents, the Neighborhood House's Eviction Assistance Fund offers relief and stability when it's needed most. This is what it means to be community.

Coffee is Tanzania's largest export crop and is the livelihood of 400,000 families. Historically, progress has taken the form of increased production, but "home processing" led to inconsistency in cup quality and thus lower prices on the international market. Mwika North, a cooperative of 180 farmers, has cultivated a vision of how a centralized mill and member education could boost quality and create consistency. It is a community-focused project that is primed for partnership.