Apr 3, 2017 By Harry Funk 3 min read

For the few months between the start of the school year and winter break, Carissa Howard’s 7-year-old son toted the same backpack to Eisenhower Elementary each day.

“They go through these things so fast,” she said, pointing out the various holes, rips and tears that developed in relatively short order. “You forget how hard they are on stuff.”

The Upper St. Clair mother replaced his “cheapy” backpack, as she referred to it, with one of more substance as a holiday gift, along with another for her 5-year-old daughter.

It was a case of buy one, get one free, but not in the usual sense.

“There are two corresponding backpacks donated to Pittsburgh Public Schools from that purchase,” Howard said.

She spearheaded a holiday backpack drive through Pittsburgh Moms Blog, the website for which she writes and manages sales and sponsorships.

During March, which marked the one-year anniversary of the site, 98 backpacks filled with supplies, on a pallet weighing 500 pounds, arrived at the school district office on Bellefield Avenue for distribution to deserving students in the city.

“We heave readers from all over the Pittsburgh area. We have writers from all over the Pittsburgh area,” Howard related. “We thought this would be a good sort of central way to get these to the right kids.”

The project served as the initial charitable community outreach for Pittsburgh Moms Blog, which is affiliated nationally with City Moms Blog Network, which extends to 70 metropolises.

“Especially for new moms, they need a connection to other moms,” Howard said. “They can come to the website and look for stories about children and about moms that relate to them. And these stories written by other moms really resonate with our readers, because we’ve gone through similar situations.”

As for Howard – high school sports fans may remember her as Carissa Tener, who played basketball for Upper St. Clair in the mid-’90s – her story includes a scholarship to Cornell University, law school at the University of Pittsburgh and a career as a litigator. When her son was born, she decided to put the brakes on practicing.

“The law firm is a place that requires 60, 70 hours a week,” she explained. “It’s not very conducive to work-life balance.”

These days, she puts her writing skills to work with Pittsburgh Moms Blog while also drawing on her legal experience.

“This reminds me a lot of practicing law, because we have clients, and I’m trying to get their products and services to the right audience,” she said.

The backpacks came from a California company, Sydney Paige Inc., which often works with organizations on philanthropic efforts.

“We follow each other on Twitter,” Howard said about herself and Sydney Paige owner Courtney Brockmeyer, who named the company after her two daughters. “People make business connections online now. I had a couple of phone conversations with the manufacturer, but mostly it’s done by email or social media.”

As for Pittsburgh Moms Blog, mothers throughout the area

“We have moms writing about special-needs children,” Howard said. “We have moms writing about fostering children, about being a stepmothers. We have stay-at-home moms. We have working moms. We really cover all the sort of demographics of different moms in different situations.”

Visit pittsburgh.citymomsblog.com.