The
Birmingham Foundation never fails to keep the community in mind: The foundation, based in South Pittsburgh, released its bi-annual report this week, opting to publish the report online only for environmental reasons. That move saved an estimated 150,000 sheets of paper, says executive director Mark Bibro.
You can find the interactive online report
here. It covers the foundation's work over the past two years, a time of financial hardship for many in South Pittsburgh. Despite these challenging economic times, there is much in the report to celebrate: The Birmingham Foundation has given more than $10 million to more than 150 nonprofits since grantmaking began in 1997.
"We're working as much as we can with children in the hilltop," Bibro says. "Our focus, primarily, is anti-violence, particularly with young kids." Programs include the mentoring of teenagers by neighborhood senior citizens. "We have a senior person kind of adopt a 14- or 15-year-old person, who cuts their grass, shovels snow and gets a stipend for that work," he says. "Many of the older folks are concerned, almost scared, about the numbers of kids, so one of our goals is to make connections between them."
Among the programs mentioned in the report is Voices Against Violence, which aims to reduce interpersonal conflict among young people. Another is the Student Conservation Association (pictured here), which gets kids involved in caring for their local environment. Teens who work with SCA, "are paid to do something green in their community," Bibro says. By cleaning up the environment and improving it, he says, "they get excited about what they've accomplished and they also make some money."
Little by little, these organizations are changing lives in South Pittsburgh, with help from the Birmingham Foundation. They are "on the streets every day in those communities, doing job training, mentoring, things of that nature," Bibro says. "They know the kids by name."
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Source: Mark Bibro, Birmingham Foundation
Image courtesy of The Birmingham Foundation