Today the crew and I headed out to Braddock. I have heard a great deal about this area of Pittsburgh, but had never ventured over here. Mama Trempus loaned me a well known novel, Out of This Furnace, which describes some the area during some of the heydays of steel production. One of the things on the Must See List was actually their Carnegie Library (the first one in Pittsburgh which had a tunnel from the mine into the bathhouse so mill workers could clean up before entering the library) which was conveniently right across the street from the community center where we started our morning.
Braddock, for those of you too lazy to read the Wikipedia article, was once a booming part of Pittsburgh. Unfortunately the steel industry started to slow down around the same time there was a large cocaine epidemic. As a result, crime began to increase and the community's infrastructure began to decline. Since 2005, things have started to improve for the Braddock community thanks to their colorful mayor, John Fetterman. His work has gained him national attention as slowly he is bringing back the community, with help from volunteers and AmeriCorps members.
Check out a video looking at what he is doing. While he looks a little rough around the edges (and now quite what you would expect) he was a great guy and seems to really want to do amazing things for the community.
While our service project was a bit of a wash (we worked with some behaviorally challenged tweens), we did make the best of the situation, and got a free breakfast and lunch out of the deal.
No comments:
Post a Comment