Building New Hope has been one of those things that has sort of been on my Pittsburgh radar, but not something I have blogged about before.  Building New Hope is a Pittsburgh non-profit organization that imports coffee beans from El Porvenir, a worker-owned coffee cooperative in Nicaragua.  The coffee is roasted locally by Coffee 19 in Washington County. Proceeds from the sale of coffee are used to fund two schools and other youth programs in Nicaragua.

Sample Building New Hope at the Fair Trade Marketplace at ECS

There are so many great ways to shop local this weekend in Pittsburgh. Saturday, December 5 is the Handmade Arcade at the Convention Center. Kerf Case, #3 on our list of 24 gifts of Pittsburgh, will be there as well as OttoFinn, #1 on our list. The blog Design Crush, which covers art and design from around the world, (but is conveniently located here in Pittsburgh) has published a preview of the 2015 Handmade Arcade here.

This weekend is also the annual Fair Trade Market at ECS (ECS is short for Environmental Charter School) in Regent Square. On Saturday and Sunday you can shop their huge marketplace of fair trade gifts. Building New Hope is one of the vendors as well as several other fair trade brands. You can see a preview of some of the items that will be for sale here.

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Shop: Building New Hope Coffee is available in regular ($13/lb) and decaf ($14/lb) and can be purchased online here.

Follow: Follow Build New Hope on Twitter @building_new_hope and Facebook.