Life & Work with Dean Cinquemani of Olmsted Township Ohio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dean Cinquemani.

Hi Dean, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
The Community for Better Living began its life around 2010. The idea that sparked it was really twofold, first, as a pastor, I had been challenged by a mentor to create something so meaningful in its community that the locals around would really miss it if it ever closed, perhaps even fight to keep it open. The second inspiration was really about operation. Most community centers are owned by a church or a city or a club, the Community for Better Living was founded and driven to have its own control. As we began, it was really thought of as an education center where the community could come, free of charge, and participate in educational classes intended to help life work better. Ideally these classes would be taught by professionals from within the community. With that mission, healthy cooking classes began, taught by a local Cleveland Clinic doctor, financial wellness classes, CPR, autism awareness, fire safety and how to use a fire extinguisher. We even had a “white hat hacker” come in and teach classes on how to protect yourself when online. Somewhere along the line the Greater Cleveland Foodbank connected with us through a dear friend that was operating a pantry with them in Cleveland at another center I was connected to and in 2016 we added food security aid to the list of things we had been doing. Covid drove need and numbers in that area and we worked our way through the pandemic, suspending all of our operations with the exception of the food distributions, we never skipped a distribution throughout the pandemic and found ourselves serving larger and larger crowds. Today our distribution crowds continue to grow as we have been bringing our other classes back into operation.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Smooth for the most part. Challenges happen but we have really been fortunate in that they always seem to be met. Covid was a big one. In one week we went from serving 75 families groceries for two weeks to 145families. Our partnership with the Foodbank made all of that possible and more as we recently saw our new high number served hit 309 families.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m not entirely sure how to answer this as we are talking about the community for better living. As the director and founder I work hard to keep the center focused on helping people in all facets of better living. Health, food security, finance, safety, spirituality, and anything else i can find and find professionals in the community to teach

Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
Relationships are key. I read a lot of books on spirituality and self health and awareness but as a rule the Community for Better Living is a “road less traveled” concept where we grow and get healthy by helping others. It’s a community and as such, I get help from friends, volunteers, local professionals and really any that grab the concept and get involved.

Pricing:

• All educational classes and entertainment are free, in fact, we often get sponsors for fundraisers making them available free of charge

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Communityforbetterliving.org
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BetterLivingCLE/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/community-for-better-living