We grow up so fast. On Thursday, January 31, 2013, please join Awesome Pittsburgh Trustees, awardees, and friends to celebrate Awesome Pittsburgh’s first birthday!
When: Thursday, January 31st from 7 – 9 pm
Where: AVA Lounge, 126 S. Highland Avenue, East Liberty (map)
Visit our Facebook page to let us know you are coming, or just show up and surprise us!
With all the buzz around the “maker” movement, it’s easy to forget that for generations, sewing machines allowed people to dream up and make new creations in their own homes everyday. Our November winner, Urban Stitches, has a mission to reintroduce sewing to the young people of Pittsburgh. “The goal of Urban Stitches is for young people throughout the city to have the opportunity to learn to sew irrespective of their family’s financial status. Our instructors are eager to pass the love of sewing and the enjoyment of imagining, discovering, and creating on to the next generation,” says Tameka Reed, the leader of the Urban Stitches program.
Sewing instruction has become increasingly rare for students in a lot of schools. In fact, the idea for Urban Stitches came to Ms. Reed when she discovered that the local schools no longer offered sewing classes. That’s when she decided to develop and offer a course at no cost to students. Urban Stitches will provide an opportunity for teens ages 13-18 to learn outside of the classroom in a less intimidating setting. Reed, a Pittsburgh native and former Clarissa School of Fashion Design student, plans to use Awesome Pittsburgh’s $1,000 grant to purchase several sewing machines for the program and offer classes as part of an 8-week program.
Congrats to Urban Stitches!
Awesome Pittsburgh awards $1000 grants every month to great ideas like Tameka’s. Any idea that you believe is awesome is eligible, and submissions are due on the first of each month. Apply today!
Update 2/5/13: Tameka is launching the classes for 10 young women ages 12-18 at George Westinghouse High School in collaboration with the YWCA of Greater Pittsburgh. She’s looking for donations of sewing machines, notions, patterns, fabrics, zippers, buttons, etc. If you’ve got anything to donate, please contact Tameka (sew_1 [at] msn.com) - your generosity will help introduce a new generation to sewing!
Our monthly deadline for applications has been moved from the 15th to the 1st (by Midnight). We’ll still announce the winner by the end of the month. If you’ve submitted over the past 4-5 weeks, don’t worry. We’re holding on to those applications and will consider them with others coming in by Nov. 1. As always, our simple application form is here.
New to Awesome Pittsburgh? Here’s some language from a post a year ago that captures some of our intentions:
Fabled sports teams. Beautiful hills and rivers. Pride in neighborhoods. World-renowned universities, employers, and nonprofits.
All this and more makes the Pittsburgh region awesome. But most importantly, it’s the hundreds of daily, unseen acts of people being good neighbors and mentors. It’s the inspiring ideas fermenting in people’s garages and backyards, in their workrooms and classrooms. It’s the hidden creativity and talents waiting to be unleashed.
In short, our region’s awesomeness comes from people like you.
And we hope people like us, the trustees of Awesome Pittsburgh. We’re unabashed in our pride in living here and in our belief in our fellow residents. So much so that we’re willing to put up our own hard-earned cash to fund awesome ideas. We’re not Carnegies, Hillmans, or Dietrichs. But, like them we believe in Pittsburgh and in Pittsburghers (new and old).
We believe in your ability to make our region even more awesome.
You can submit your idea for advancing awesomeness in the Pittsburgh area here. And if that awesome idea hasn’t quite gelled yet, don’t worry. We’ll make more $1,000 awards for ideas submitted in the coming months.
So bring it on. Inspire us, wow us, move us, make us laugh or weep with joy. In short, be the awesome people we know you can be!
Local photographer Caldwell Linker is Awesome Pittsburgh’s 10th winner of $1,000. Caldwell’s work is best described through the applications we received over three months:
Recently I put out a book called “the Haus of Haunt: Watch Children” about underground Pittsburgh drag queens (one of whom, Sharon Needles, isn’t so underground any more, June 12th was official Sharon Needles day in Pittsburgh).
I do lots of other really awesome stuff as well. I photograph tons of performers and their performances, and let them use the images for their own publicity for free (most can’t afford to pay for photos yet). I photograph queer weddings for free as a political statement. I document protests and marches and let folks use whatever images they want. I take pictures at parties and benefits and let people use whatever they want for future promotion. I take pictures of people with life altering disabilities and surgeries that they then use to inspire others to overcome similar setbacks and disabilities. I take pictures of people who think they are ugly that show them that they aren’t and make them feel better about themselves. I photograph the artwork of struggling artists to help them promote their work.
I do almost all this for free because I think people deserve good photos, and many of the artists and folks I work with, don’t have the success they are striving for just yet, and can’t afford a photographer.
You can follow Caldwell on Twitter and check out some of the photos on Tumblr.
How often do you get to include the word ‘awesome‘ on your resume? Here is your chance! We’re looking for a passionate, organized, independent and innovative individual to join us this fall as the Awesome (Marketing and Events) Intern.
Here’s what we can offer:
Here’s what we will need you to do:
Some nuts and bolts info:
To learn more about Awesome Pittsburgh, visit http://www.awesomepgh.com. To apply, send us an email to
say why you’d be an Awesome Intern and be sure to attach your resume awesomepgh@gmail.com.
Where can you meet a cross-section of Pittsburgh’s creative minds, social innovators, community champions, and passionate entrepreneurs? At Awesome Pittsburgh’s next party of course:
We’d love to have you join us to meet cool people (likely cooler than us), be inspired by our previous $1,000 winners, and maybe – just maybe – have your chance at pitching your awesome idea to the crowd. And, of course, you already know that our great host – Bar Marco – is already famous for its awesome cocktails!
Stop by our Facebook event page and let us know you’re coming, and feel free to bring an awesome friend.
And don’t forget our next monthly application deadline is Sept. 15. Submit your idea for making the Pittsburgh region more awesome at http://www.awesomefoundation.org/submissions/new. We’re happy to hear heartfelt ideas, inspiring ideas, ingenious ideas, and well, “absolutely crazy, make you laugh with surprise, Holy Crap That’s Awesome” ideas.
A child’s smile is a source of joy for her family and friends. And, her healthy teeth are vital to her own good health. But too many low-income children aren’t getting to dentists, and their smiles turn into mouthfuls of health problems. Three local Pediatricians are bringing an innovative answer and using Awesome Pittsburgh’s $1,000 to potentially leverage a larger solution.
Awesome Pittsburgh’s awarded our July grant to Happy Smiles for Hilltop, a program that will provide fluoride varnish treatments and preventative education to families and children in Pittsburgh’s Hilltop neighborhood.
“Awesome Pittsburgh is providing the catalyst for change for the teeth of Pittsburgh’s Hilltop children. Our awesome kids are sometimes spending the night at the Children’s Hospital for intravenous antibiotics and mouth surgery to fight the infections caused by cavities. Some kids stop growing because it hurts too much to chew with teeth destroyed by cavities. Thankfully, there is a help – Fluoride! Pediatricians across the country are starting to apply fluoride varnish to young children’s teeth. Simply put, kids have a hard time getting to the dentist. But nearly all kids come to the pediatrician’s office for their check ups. For pediatricians, this is an incredible opportunity to do more to improve the lives of our amazing children. Pediatric patients at Hilltop Community Healthcare Center will receive fluoride varnish at well child visits, a previously non-funded service and get connected with area dentists. We will teach about the devastation caused by pop, candy and cavities. We want our kids to succeed in every way – keeping them in school, healthy and out of the hospital due to dental infections.” – Dr. Amy Nevin
Dr. Amy Nevin , Dr. Peduzzi, and Dr. Susan Sieminski are Pediatricians at the Hilltop Community Healthcare Center serving Beltzhoover, Allentown and Knoxville and surrounding communities. They will be working to address an overwhelming problem – cavities! At each Well Child visit between the ages of 15 months and 5 years, the doctors will apply fluoride varnish to teeth. One thousand dollars is enough to buy fluoride for over 600 applications. More importantly, they will take this opportunity to educate families and children about the importance of going to the Dentist – hoping to connect families with area dentists.
The doctors noted that the pediatric literature already confirms the benefits of fluoride varnish:
“We would like to demonstrate that with this simple intervention, patients will be more likely to schedule a dentist appointment and less likely to be admitted to the hospital for dental procedures. These are outcomes that could save insurers and families the costs of ER visits, hospital admission, intravenous antibiotics and pediatric anesthesia. We will present our results to health insurance companies, hoping that they will start to fund this preventative health initiative at Federally Qualified Health Centers like ours, to keep our awesome kids healthy and save money for our health care system.”
UPDATE 8/4/12: The Happy Smiles team was featured in our new monthly interview on Essential Public Radio. Click here for a listen.
mikecaps
tonymacklin