How Leboku, an obscure Nigerian yam festival, gained global tourists' attention

Led by Native Hawai’ians, Kamehameha Schools owns thousands of acres of land dedicated to stewardship and conservation. The school partners with Native Hawaiian organizations and conducts eco-cultural education programs for students and members of the community to foster connections between them and the environment.

The Haitian nonprofit Life of Hope had faced chronic rental instability for years before developing a financing strategy using federal funds, bridge loans, and private donations to finally secure permanent ownership of a facility. Since purchasing a warehouse to house the organization in June 2024, the organization has solidified itself as a permanent pillar in the local Haitian community, providing English classes, cultural programming, and other community services to more than 60,000 people, serving as a model for other Haitian nonprofits.

The Mar a Mar association is slowly improving the 174-mile hiking trail, Camino de Costa Rica, with new infrastructure to attract more tourists. The path was built to bring tourism profits inland to the local communities that need it. The association is also helping members of those communities develop small businesses around the trail.

Ethnic grocery stores create a sense of community for immigrant communities and improve food security by providing affordable, culturally relevant foods.

Circular Cleveland is a project run by the city and a nonprofit to help Cleveland develop a circular economy. Through community ambassadors, grants, and consultants the program is helping innovators and companies make circular switches.

Hawaiians are restoring fishponds to working order with tasks like fixing rock walls and removing pollution to reimplement land practices of the past into daily life. These ponds consist of a rock wall, a gate for midsized fish to enter, and things the fish feed on like algae and coral.

Bay Islands Conservation Association is an environmental organization in Rotán, Honduras, working with local communities to balance tourism and the safety of the natural environment. It does so through science and data collection, supporting and informing authorities, and educating the communities.

“UNDSCVRD SF," funded by the SOMA Community Stabilization Fund and produced by the nonprofit Kultivate Labs, is a night market held once a month from July to November that features a range of Filipino vendors. There were over 35,000 attendees in 2019 and it generated $300,000 in sales. It also serves as a testing ground to select businesses for Kultivate Labs’ SEED Accelerator Program and grantees for the SOMA Fund. The former provides bootcamps and one-on-one support for Filipino-owned businesses that are located in, or would like to be located in, a permanent space within the SOMA cultural district.

A town once plagued by a reputation of being an asbestos Superfund site as well as having been hit by the timber wars, Libby, Montana is back on the map. Lincoln County commissioner, Mark Peck of Libby, the county seat, decided to make it a priority to fix the negative connotation surrounding the town and partnered with a public relations firm to rebrand the city through the use of the community's unique story of rising from asbestos.

Atlanta's city government used public real estate, favorable financing, and a quasi-public development authority to open a privately-operated grocery store in a downtown food desert within nine months, serving more than 150,000 customers with prices matched to Kroger and generating nearly 20% revenue growth.