Kmo27

My Blog Posts

• A Story of a Little Charity
  08/15/2008 06:13:22 PM EST
  Last week, Sports Illustrated magazine did a really nice highlight on a local native that is competing for in the Olympics.  Lauryn Williams is a 100 meter track star who was part of the Share the Good section of SI.  So why is Lauryn Williams mentioned in a blog that focuses on national service and service programs? It’s because she is an athlete who believes in giving back to the community. She works primarily with children charities. Lauryn Williams has not lived in the Pittsburgh area all her life. She has moved around from Beaver County to Detroit to Rochester. While she has moved around, she considers herself to be Pittsburgh native.  She has excelled at sprinting and came in third at the 2008 Olympic Trials. She was NCAA 100m champion.
  
• Counter Productive Efforts
  08/08/2008 02:00:25 PM EST
  The Beijing Olympics are going to officially start today yet people are taking the stance saying China shouldn’t host the Olympics and want to protest. Just last night, Amnesty International held a vigil here in Pittsburgh to protest the Olympics. But I think people are missing the point about the Olympics and the reason China won the bid for the Olympics in the first place. In the end protests by agencies like Amnesty International undermine the whole purpose of the Olympics. The goal of the Olympics is to unite the world for two weeks in the name of sports. It’s a once every four years (well two years now that they separated the summer and winter Olympics) where people from all over the world gather in the same buildings and really talk. Culture and ideas are shared between comrades in arms so to say.  The location of the Olympics has been mobile since the Olympics were restarted and there has been a share of controversial sites over the years. But no site has been heavier contested as having the Olympics in Beijing.
  
• Random Acts of Kindness
  07/31/2008 10:06:44 PM EST
  While reading the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, it was hard to find articles related to National Service going on here in Pittsburgh. But in the process of the research, I did discover something that I did see to be a nice thing for a large city paper to do. That was the section called Random Acts of Kindness. Random Acts of Kindness is a neat little section where people write in and talk about how someone from the Pittsburgh area did something kind or just plain neat. It’s a way for people to publicly thank and recognize efforts of people.  It’s the whole idea of paying it forward and showing thanks.
• New Money For Community Projects
  07/25/2008 06:59:43 PM EST
  I was reading various local articles from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette over the past few days, I was happy to see a break in the negative news to see how PNC has loaned $5 million to the Pittsburgh Urban Economic Loan Fund (part of the Landmarks Community Capital Corp Landmarks). This is an exciting addition to the fund since it loans money to help improve neighborhoods. Plus this huge amount of money is going to be distributed pretty quickly. They want to give out the loans to the neighborhoods in the next few months. It won’t be money just sitting in the back or not being used. One of the exciting things about this fund is that it going to help the Hill District. The Hill District has made their voice heard rather loud lately during the negotiations for the new Penguins Stadium. The Penguins Stadium negotiation included the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA). This CBA left the Hill District without the grocery store that they really wanted. But by increasing the Urban Economic Loan Fund, there is new hope for the grocery store in the Hill District (that is if the deal with Save-A-Lot falls through.
• Troubles in Kenya and National Service
  07/18/2008 03:09:22 PM EST
  This blog post is going to take a little bit of a different turn from my other posts. I was really struck by an article on ESPN.com about the death of Lucas Sang. He died because of the problems within his country. He was trying to get rights that were lacking for his tribe and there is some controversy as to why he died and why he was involved in the conflict. All that is truly known is dead and people are afraid to talk about his death even to trusted human rights workers. So why do I bring this up in a local blog about Pittsburgh? It’s because it got me thinking about the work done by the Pittsburgh Refugee Center and the reasons national service exists in the first place.