Dear Friends, Family, and Supporters of the Arts: I, Adriana E. Ramirez, am writing to you on behalf of the Steel City Slam via the Pittsburgh Poetry Collective, an organization that provides a space for self-expression, identity exploration, & social justice via spoken word leagues, performances & community writing workshops in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Poetry Collective is dedicated to the process of making spoken word in Pittsburgh connect with a national audience, but we need your help. Although we are new, some of our programs have been around since the early 1990s. Wanna know the specifics? Visit www.pghpoetry.org for more information. We welcome any opportunity for lyrical mayhem and believe that performance poetry heals, connects, articulates, and shares our experiences as well as our differences. Our Young Steel youth slam received recognition from the City of Pittsburgh for our work with local teens; we plan to eventually take our youth to the national tournament, but that requires volunteers and community resources. The Steel City Slam, our competitive adult spoken word/slam poetry organization, represents Pittsburgh each year at the National Poetry Slam. This year, our team is traveling to Boston on August 12th. As a poet on the Steel City Slam team, I am responsible for fundraising $500. I would really appreciate your help (as small or large as possible) in achieving this goal. Your donation will bring us closer to our team goal of $2,000 by August 12th. Our community is clearly excited and eager to see this project succeed. You can be a part of that excitement by supporting our adults and youth with a donation as small as $5 or as large as you wish. We are happy to acknowledge your donation on our website and at our numerous events, (unless you prefer otherwise, there are options on our support us page). Please help spoken word in Pittsburgh achieve its goal by visiting http://www.pghpoetry.org/support-us/ and making a donation now. Make sure to select "Adri" in the "Supporting a Poet" drop-down menu. I would like to thank you for considering this opportunity to partner with our organization for raising funds. If you have any queries regarding our organization, our fund management policy, or the project itself, please feel free to contact us at info@pghpoetry.org. Thank you, Adriana E. Ramirez aeramirez@gmail.com