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Category: Community Organizations

  • 2 Women-Focused Organization Awarded At Nonprofit Accelerator Event

    2 Women-Focused Organization Awarded At Nonprofit Accelerator Event

    Lakeisha Wolf, Executive Director of Ujamaa Collective, presents at the Full Circle Impact Accelerator Pitch Event

    Two women-focused nonprofits were awarded $500 each at December 15th’s Social Venture Partners’ Full Circle Impact Accelerator Pitch Event. The event, held at Google Pittsburgh’s HQ, was a culmination of a fourteen-week accelerator program from Social Venture Partners Pittsburgh, a philanthropic grantmaking organization based on the venture capital model.

    The night’s $500 recipients were Ujamaa Collective and Prototype PGH. Ujamaa Collective invests in the economic and social growth of Africana women entrepreneurs and artisans through a boutique in the Hill District and Prototype PGH operates a North Oakland maker-space and offers maker educational programming focused on equity and feminism.

    Prototype PGH co-founders, Erin Elizabeth (Oldynski) Gatz & E.Louise Larson, give their pitch at the Full Circle Impact Accelerator Pitch Event

    At the event, five nonprofits presented information about their organization to three judges and to a packed room full 170+ people. Pitching, in addition to the two $500 recipients, were the Alliance for Police Accountability, the Global Switchboard, and New Fear Being Different. The night’s judges were Ilana Diamond, Managing Director of AlphaLab Gear, Mike Capsambelis, Product Management at Google, and Karen Brackett, Vice President at NexTier Bank, the marquee sponsor for the event.

    The participating nonprofits also competed for an ‘audience favorite’ award. This prize, also for $500, was awarded to New Fear Being Different, a media platform that uses inspirational and entertaining content to shed light on social issues and connect people.

    Those that didn’t receive a $500 award were also supported. Each nonprofit received $2,000 for completing the Full Circle Impact Accelerator program, which was sponsored by UPMC/UPMC Health Plan. Also, an additional $2,600 was separately pledged by the night’s audience and spread across all the organizations that pitched at the event. In total, $14,000+ indirect contributions were made to the five nonprofits.

    Social Venture Partners Pittsburgh’s Full Circle Impact Accelerator is managed by the Social Impact business development firm, CitizenCity, and its principals Ryan Gayman and Benjamin Utter. To learn more about Social Venture Partners and its programs visit, svppittsburgh.org.

     

    Disclaimer: The author attended this event for fun and never identified himself as a reporter at the actual event. The author has also attended other events put on by Social Venture Partners for fun.

     

  • 2016 Wilkinsburg Vacant Home Tour Planning Meeting

    2016 Wilkinsburg Vacant Home Tour Planning Meeting

    One of the most popular posts here on the blog last spring was about the Wilkinsburg Vacant Home Tour. Blogger Ray Bowman wrote a recap of his visit to the tour here.

    I was able to stop by and check out a few of the houses featured on the tour, I was on the fence about the idea of bringing a bunch of people to see vacant homes in Wilkinsburg. I was impressed with many of the efforts behind this event and the amount of history that was shared on each of the properties.

    The planning meeting for the 2016 Wilkinsburg Vacant Home Tour is on Thursday, March 3rd from 6-8pm at the PHLF Resource Center located at 744 Rebecca Avenue in Wilkinsburg. 

    vacant-home-tour-planning meeting

    Historic Preservation & Building Reuse in Pittsburgh

    Interested in historic preservation in Pittsburgh? Here are some other links worth a look…

     

     

  • Get Started Programming With Code & Supply

    This Saturday, at 1PM, Pittsburgh technology community Code & Supply invites you to their latest installment of their #StarterSeries. Their #StarterSeries project promotes basic programming and coding literacy and encourages everyone to code. Their hope is to grow the Pittsburgh technology community, not just by making it attractive to existing developers, but by teaching Pittsburghers how to be great software developers.

    MVC Diagram (Model-View-Controller)
    This month’s installment expects a basic familiarity with programming. They intend to explore the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern and the fundamentals of Object-Oriented-Programming (OOP). MVC and OOP combined are the basis of nearly every program and application you interact with, and this is a great opportunity for aspiring programmers to learn the basics.

    To keep up to date with the #StarterSeries and all of Code & Supply’s other events, join their meetup group.

     

    http://www.meetup.com/Pittsburgh-Code-Supply/events/221470479/

  • Awesome Pittsburgh to Hold Office Hours on Sunday

    Awesome-Pittsburgh-bannerIf you are interested in who in Pittsburgh is helping others to turn ideas into reality then one of the organizations that you need to know about is Awesome Pittsburgh.

    Pittsburgh needs more people coming up and trying out crazy ideas.  And I love Awesome Pittsburgh and the Awesome Foundation because they help people try out these ideas.  One of the major theories in the world of startups in the idea of Lean Entrepreneurship and MVP (minimum viable product).  How soon can you get your business to market to try the idea and get feedback.  I think that Awesome Pittsburgh grants bring a much needed support to help Pittsburghers get turn ideas in to actual projects.

    For example, one of the amazing people I met last month on the Millennial Trains Project trip is Jennie Gottstein who has created an interesting project in San Francisco called Score.  I would love to see if we could bring Jennie and Score to Pittsburgh and I am certainly going to see if Awesome Pittsburgh can help make that idea a reality.  [By the way – Jennie is also the brains behind a zombie themed disaster preparedness game that would be great to bring to Pittsburgh too – be sure to follow her on Twitter @jettstein]

    Learn More at the Awesome Pittsburgh Office Hours

    So if you have an idea, or just the beginnings of an idea for something you would like to see in Pittsburgh – head over to Social at Bakery Square on Sunday to meet the Awesome Pittsburgh team and get some feedback on your idea and how to apply for an Awesome grant.

    Awesome Pittsburgh Office Hours
    Sunday, September 14th // 1:00pm – 3:00pm
    Social, Bakery Square – 6425 Penn Ave, Larimer
    No RSVP necessary

    Some of the amazing projects that Awesome Pittsburgh has Already Supported

    You can check out the whole list here – all are truely awesome.  But here are a few that you can check out to see what $1000 can do for the community

    • Smiles for Hilltop – helping local doctors test a program to provide dental care and prevention in the Hilltop neighborhoods.
    • ZipPitt – exploring a zipline for Pittsburgh
    • GLAD Bags for Foster Children – creating comfort bags for kids who are removed from a home to replace the trash bag which is what is currently used.

    What is Awesome Pittsburgh?

    The short answer – a group that gives out $1000 grants to great ideas

    The long answer…

    Awesome Pittsburgh is a chapter of the Awesome Foundation, a global network of people devoted to forwarding the interest of awesomeness in the universe.

    The Awesome Foundation grants money – cold hard cash – to people or groups with brilliant ideas, with a new project getting funded each month by chapters around the world. Pittsburgh, already a hotbed of awesomeness, is brimming with smart, passionate, creative, crazy people. Awesome Pittsburgh is giving some of you $1000 to do something amazing. We want to hear the best ideas for making Pittsburgh stand out in the global economy, for connecting our communities, for celebrating art or technology, for making the city a better place to live, work, and play, or for simply surprising and delighting us and our fellow Pittsburghers.

    Read more about the Awesome Foundations in other cities…

  • A Conversation About Gun Safety

    200px-LWV_LogoI know this is a bit of a detour from our usual postings about things to do in Pittsburgh.  But, I wanted to post about this event because I think the League of Women Voters is an important organizations that more people need to know about and because I think this is an important issue for cities.  Please take a moment to follow the League of Women Voters Pittsburgh on Facebook here.

    The League of Women Voters is a non-partisan organization – that means that they cannot advocate for any specific candidate or position.  The League of Women Voters exists to provide more education about government and issues.

    Gun Safety in a Free
    Allegheny County Conversation Presented by the League of Women Voters of Greater Pittsburgh

    Sunday, October 6, 2013, 1 – 5 pm
    In Oakland — with free parking and refreshments
    Bus routes 71B, 61D & 61B
    Get beyond the slogans and help explore possible solutions with your fellow citizens of Allegheny County
    Facebook Event

    The League of Women Voters of Greater Pittsburgh (LWVGP) is sponsoring this forum to promote discussion and cooperation among Allegheny County residents with different views and experiences with guns. Participants will divide into small groups for moderated discussion based on a guide booklet of background information containing facts and viewpoints on guns and society. A panel of experts will be available to respond to questions from the small groups. The goal of these discussions is to identify policies or actions that will promote public health and gun safety in our communities.

    Participation is free, but registration is required. Click here for online registration or call the League of Women Voters at 412-261-4284. Registration requires the completion of a short, confidential survey, to assure that all interests are represented in each group. A link to the discussion guide and location information is provided at the end of the registration process. Register now. The deadline is September 30th.

    Presented in association with the Program for Deliberative Democracy at Carnegie Mellon University.