Tonight, Councilman Bill Peduto will be a guest at the Strong Women Strong Girls Jump into Spring jump-rope-a-thon. More than 200 girls and adult supporters will participate in this jump-rope event, which will raise money for the foundation.  Other celebrity guests will include Teresa Conn, founder of the Pittsburgh Passion, and members of the Pittsburgh Steelers team.

Strong Women Strong Girls is an after school program for underprivileged girls in grades 3 -5.  The goal of the program is to help these girls build positive self-esteem and skills that will make them into strong women.  Girls are paired with undergraduate women from local colleges to serve as mentors.

The annual Pennsylvania Federation of College Democrats convention was held  in Oakland at the University of Pittsburgh in early April this year.  Students who attended the convention got a lesson in local government at the City Council Roundtable, which was one of several opportunities that the students had that weekend to interact with local and state politicians.

Councilman Bill Peduto, Council President Doug Shields, and Mac Booker answered questions from students, and spoke about their role in City government.  Topics of discussion included everything from the issue of the City County merger, to the background of the panelists and how they became involved in local politics.

Congratulations to Hal Glick, the winner of the Brackets and Brunch with Bill contest!

Because of his fantastic bracket predictions, Hal and three of his friends will have brunch with Councilman Bill Peduto at Point Brugge Cafe in Point Breeze!

Thank you to everyone who joined in on the game!  You all had great predictions, and made this contest a close one. Sorry to all of the Pitt fans out there!

This week, tons of volunteers came out to our campaign office to help us with a huge mailing.  With their help, we were able to mail out over 6,000 letters this week!  A huge “thank you” to all of these fantastic volunteers – we could not have done this without your energy, enthusiasm, and willingness to devote some time to our campaign!

Check out this video created by one of our campaign volunteers, Greg Hauenstein, to get an inside look on what we worked on this week.  This video features one of our star volunteers, Alexis, who came out to help us with this mailing several days this week – thanks Alexis!

Last week, Councilman Bill Peduto spent time in two of the elementary schools in Pittsburgh, the Linden Elementary School and the Imagine Environmental Charter School at Frick Park.

At the Liden School, Councilman Peduto read three books to a classroom of elementary children.

At the Imagine Environmental Charter School, Councilman Peduto was a guest speaker at  an assembly.  During his presentation he explained the international movement Earth Hour, which occurred last Saturday night.  He also discussed the image of Pittsburgh as the “smokey city,” and his goal of changing this image.

He addressed a very captive audience, which had many questions for him after his presentation.  For more pictures of both events, check out Councilman Peduto’s Flickr page!

Phipps Conservatory

Once again Pittsburgh has become the focus of a New York Times story.  On March 31, the newspaper published “The Greening of Pittsburgh” which details the emergence of green technologies in our city.

The article discusses the role of the Green Building Alliance, and many well-known  Pittsburgh landmarks, including The Children’s Museum and Phipps Conservatory.  Check out the article to learn more about Pittsburgh’s green side – you may learn some surprising facts about your own city!

Martha Isler, Scott Gleason, and Kayla Smith

On Saturday morning, the campaign staff went out to lend a hand at the TreeVitalize planting in Squirrel Hill.  Nine new trees were added to the landscape of Darlington road that morning with the help of community groups and neighbors.

The goal of TreeVitalize is to increase Pittsburgh’s urban forest by planting 20,000 trees throughout the city by 2012.

This spring, with the help of community groups and volunteers, TreeVitalize Pittsburgh will plant over 1250 trees in Pittsburgh neighborhoods.  To get involved, visit the TreeVitalize list of planting dates and sign up!