YPO Strings, don’t miss this wonderful opportunity! You are invited to perform holiday favorites on the evening of Friday, December 6, with Mr. Worsdale in the stunning chapel at LaRoche College’s Festival of Lights event in McCandless (North Hills). Rehearsal is Thursday, December 5, approx. 5:00-8:00pm at the TRYPO offices Downtown (212 Ninth Street). Performance night, approx. 6:00pm call time, 7:00pm performance. RSVP here ASAP before all spots are filled. Valid for school community service hours, and participation will earn your Student Team 10 points per participant.

The Day of Giving is coming up on Tuesday, December 3, 2019. This national day of charitable giving has become a fun challenge in Pittsburgh and we are looking forward to participating. Our goal for this year is to increase the number of unique donors, which we will track by e-mail address. Here is how you can help and how you can earn points for your team:

1. Tracking Pledges: We have created a page on our website to track Day of Giving Pledges: www.trypo.org/DOG. Each pledge that is linked to a donation on the Day of Giving will earn your team 5 points. In this method, you can direct anyone who wants to pledge to your team on this page starting any time you want. TRYPO will do the reminders and follow-up for your pledgers.
2. Submit a pitch!: We will begin sending out e-mails to our full list so some donors might arrive at the page organically. Your team can submit a short “pitch” on why a supporter should pick your team to pledge to. Submit your statement to TRYPO by Saturday, November 23 and it will be added to this page. An example could be, “Please pick our team! For every donation attributed to our team, we will each [practice an extra 10 minutes in January/contribute 10 minutes of service at the charity we picked/What ideas have you talked about?]
3. Team Fund-Raising Pages: Want to get creative online? Your team can create its own Day of Giving Fund-Raising page. Any donations received through your fund-raising page will also be attributed to your team and earn you 5 points (even if they did not track their pledge ahead of time). These personal pages don’t take long to set up. You can upload a photo, and write any blurb you want. To set up your page, click HERE, and click on the Yellow “Fundraise” box in the middle of the screen. In the “First and Last Name” Field, enter your Team Name. The e-mail address and password you use for this page needs to be by a student who agrees to monitor this page on the day of giving, and make any updates and changes that your team agrees to.
4. 1.  

Melodic Minors Toy Drive: For our service project, we are helping others by collecting toys for children for the holidays.  Since our concert is right in the middle of toy season, we have figured out two ways to help kids:

1. Used toy drive!  Bring a used toy, game, electronics, sports equipment, book, or movie (DVD only) to rehearsal this weekend, December 7.  No clothes or stuffed animals, please.  We will donate those previously-loved items to Play it Forward Pittsburgh – they will set up a store in the Convention Center on December 14 for families to choose gifts for their children, ages 0-16.

Message: Thank you to everyone who brought used toys and books to rehearsal last

week – they were all donated to Play It Forward Pittsburgh and will be set up store-style at the

Pittsburgh Convention Center for families to choose gifts for their kids this Saturday!

1. New toy drive!  Bring a new toy to rehearsal, December 14 and the concert on December 15.  We will donate the new toys to the Family Care Connections Centers, part of UPMC Children’s Hopistal.  FCC provides services that support the whole family, including parents and siblings of sick children.  The toys will be given to parents, who will give them to their sick kids as well as any siblings.  There are five FCC’s in and around the city, and they share the gifts between locations to make sure every family has something.  The hospital suggested Legos for all ages, Little People play sets, Play Doh, toy cars, and card games like Uno.  New toys need to be still in the box and unwrapped, and the hospital said no homemade gifts because of sanitation requirements

Secondary Naturals Bake Sale: For our service project we are doing a bake sale on December 7 and December 14. The sale will take place on the 2^nd floor during the Symphonette break (11:15-11:30am) and from 12:30-1:00pm.  Some of the sale items will be: blueberry muffins, Russian tea cookies, and thumbprint cookies.