Pittsburgh Indian Community and Friends

Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank - Long car lines in this spring that stretch over a mile outside the Food Bank with wait times of up to five hours brought national attention to our region. The increasing unemployment in Pennsylvania combined with numerous business closures and the socially crippling coronavirus brought about a perfect storm that debilitated families that had not previously experienced food insecurity. It was worse for other families that were already suffering and did not have any transportation to get to these distribution centers! As part of its response, PICAF raised over $100K in just a matter of weeks! A dollar-to-dollar match from 84 Lumber and Nemacolin Woodlands meant that we provided over 1 million meals. We gave an additional $5K in the following months to boost these efforts

RUTH'S WAY - Ruth's Way is a non-profit that empowers at-risk girls to achieve their goals and overcome adversity. At the beginning of the program, girls have a consultation session to identify and provide access to any outside needs through a myriad of outside partnerships (e.g., housing, food, mental health resources). Following this, girls participate in a variety of programs such as the Junior Toastmasters and Leadership Development, Smart Money Management, and ACT/SAT prep and tutoring. Raising over $25K in donations, PICAF supported 200 young women in the program

Neighborhood School, Bible Center Church - Bible Center is a non-profit in Homewood that offers STEAM educational programs through its after school program, The Maker's Clubhouse, and a summer camp, Green STEAM and Play. Following COVID-19, it began a program called Neighborhood SCHOOL (Strategy Created to Help Optimize Online Learning). Neighborhood SCHOOL's program Color Coded allows Kindergarten to Grade 5 students of Color learn basic coding and robotics concepts. Raising over $25K in donations, PICAF helped fund Neighborhood SCHOOL's program Color Coded, which is done in partnership with the STEM Coding Lab (a 2019 PICAF grant recipient). This allowed 50 K-5 students of Color explore STEM and learn how to code

The Citizen Science Lab (TCSL) - PICAF provided a grant of $25,000 for TCSL in creating the Main Source--two afterschool STEM programs, in partnership with the YMCA, in two of Pittsburgh's most marginalized neighborhoods. TCSL will provide free STEM programs for the YMCA Homewood-Brushton and Hill District Thelma Lovett locations. TCSL will utilize the funding to provide after-school programming for African-American residents in these two underrepresented neighborhoods, two hours a day, five days a week, Monday through Friday, for 29 weeks. Funding will be utilized to pay for the staff members and supplies to deliver the programming at no cost to the participants. The students will be able to participate in activities such as building their own robots and black line cars. In addition, they will explore the principles of space travel through our NASA-based curriculum. Students will also be introduced to the life sciences through various biology-based activities. All of the program activities and curriculum are designed to fill the gap of opportunities for these children to participate in hands-on, engaging activities that are the core of STEM comprehension and future careers. During the holiday season, PICAF donated $2402 to two charities - Shepherd's Heart and Light of Life. Both of these organizations serve the homeless and low-income individuals. For Shepherd's Heart, 90 holiday meals were donated to veterans and those in need. For Light of Life, 43 homeless and recovering individuals were provided with warm winter thermals. Hindu Jain Temple COVID-19 fund for Students from India - PICAF donated $1000 to support students from India studying in various Pittsburgh colleges and universities who were affected by the pandemic towards meals, groceries, travel, etc. PICAF also gave an additional $483 in funds in 2020 Carnegie Mellon APEA program for books for lower income students