Crosswinds International has been a training and coaching client of Embrace Communities since July 2022 and joined the Empowered Communities Network in September of 2022. Crosswinds serves an informal settlement community in Nairobi, Kenya providing a meal six days a week to between 1,000 and 1,600 people per day.

Each day hundreds of people lined up ask for jobs. Crosswinds is actively pursuing ways to bring employment opportunities to the community. During the ABCD training, Crosswinds began asking community members how to go about bringing change.

The Pamplin Community Market is seeking to bring together the rich agricultural assets of the Pamplin area and surrounding counties to provide healthy food and opportunities to deepen community connections.  You can learn more here: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063717573930. 

Virginia State Parks Association is an active training client and a key partner in community building efforts across the South Central Virginia region.  Learn more here. 

Like many faith-rooted non-profits, Common Grace Ministries has a long history of mercy based activities including providing a financial safety net for families experiencing financial challenges, a robust feeding ministry and a furniture bank.  While these relief-based programs provide an needed service to the community, Common Grace Ministries has made a commitment to add community development to thier goals through the Noble New Way Network.  Noble New Way is using Asset-Based Community Development to build a better future for our neighbors in Noble County.  You can learn more about Noble

Allison Crews is a cultivator of community networks through wellness, food & education. Her home base of natural pHuel, located in Farmville, is an extension of her mission, a space dedicated to how we feed ourselves, on every level.  Learn more about Natural pHuel here. 

Acewall Scholars has been investing in the leaders of tomorrow through individual tutoring, mentoring and community building activities since 2006. Acewall is partnering with Embrace to grow its community engagement using ABCD strategies.  These engagement efforts include Arts and Science focused community-centered activities.  You can learn more about past engagement experiences here:

Performing Arts Community Work:

April is a community-builder, storyteller, artist and connector who blends ground-level practices of asset-based community-driven development with writing, photography/video, teaching, and network-building. She first learned the art of connection from her grandmother and mother and spent her teens experientially studying communal living and activism across the US. April later found and received training in Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) by co-founder John McKnight and ABCDI Steward De'Amon Harges.

We Understand Youth (WUY) became a coaching & training client of Embrace in June of 2022.  WUY is seeking to strengthen the Farmville Community by investing in our future community leaders - the youth of Prince Edward County.  WUY is currently in the process of building out a youth center in the south Virginia Street community which will be a hub for youth development activities in the Farmville area. You can learn more about WUY here. 

Centenary UMC has been a training and coaching client of Embrace Communities since January 2022. CUMC is one of six downtown churches, partnering in the Downtown Community Ministry, providing a noontime meal on a different day of the week. They serve between 180 and 250 people every week.

Through a churchwide discernment process, CUMC discovered thier gift in the areas of food and education.  

Belmont Community Resource Services has been a training and coaching client of Embrace Communities since 2018 and is a founding member of the Empowered Communities Network. They started a food and clothing pantry in 2004 to address food and clothing insecurity in the Belmont and Broad Rock area of South Richmond. In 2016, they established Belmont Community Resource Services, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation.