Serve PGH

About a year ago Pittsburgh's Mayor started a program called Serve PGH which:

seeks to engage citizens in impacting our City's greatest challenges through the following service initiatives: Love Your Block, Redd Up Zone, Snow Angels, Mayor's Mentoring Initiative, Civic Leadership Academy, Citizen Service Award, and Sustainable Home Improvement Partnership.

Today a couple of us ditched the office signed up to serve outside in the beautiful weather with the Pittsburgh Project.  We spent the morning helping to prepare a school garden which will be utilized by the students who attend school across the street.  Each elementary school classroom will be given their own raised bed and it is my impression that their curriculum will be tied in with the garden (that is how many of these programs operate).

After a quick round of weeding half of the volunteers (Shannon and I) filled wheelbarrows with mulch and the others would spread it around the raised beds.

This area which had been reclaimed through the Love Your Block project is situated on dirt which contains lead.  While the Pittsburgh Project purchased new dirt for the raised beds, they have been placing thick layers of mulch around the beds to protect the children.  Adults have a low incidence of picking up lead from dirt, unlike children who are more likely to put dirty hands in their mouth and can only tolerate smaller amounts of lead in their system before it has serious physical/psychological impacts (thank you EOH classes).

Needless to say I am le tired!