Here is a way that you can donate money to the Food Bank of WNY without spending a penny

Simply visit www.pfpchallenge.com and pledge the number of pounds you would like to lose, up to 50 pounds. For every pound pledged, Feeding America (through its national sponsors, including General Mills) will donate 14 cents to our Food Bank.

Believe it or not, there is no follow-up to see if you actually lost the weight – but how nice would it be to take a few pounds off for folks having difficulty keeping food on the table for their families?

It is that easy, so encourage everyone you know to participate. More than 960 Buffalo area residents have already pledged to lose at least 26,830 pounds! But we’re only ranked 52^nd in the nation. Hurry and pledge today to help the Food Bank of Western New York!

Chris Smith is one of the founders of Citybration, way back in 2006 when it was known as Buffalo Old Home Week, and is also one of the founders of WNYMedia.net, Citybration's social media sponsor.

Most of Chris's posts are insightful, and I urge you to sign on for the feed. In the meantime, however, look what he's up to now:

As a city, what can we learn from Cleveland? Certainly, Cleveland and Buffalo share many of the same obstacles to progress and neither city is a shining example of success in the new entrepreneurial economy. However, Cleveland’s business community and municipal governments have begun to embrace a spirit of entrepreneurship and creativity that Buffalo should seek to emulate. There are dozens of projects underway in the Cleveland metropolitan region that can serve as inspiration as Buffalo seeks to claw out from forty years of economic stagnation and population decline.

I’ll highlight two of those efforts in this post, I hope you’ll check them out because efforts are underway to create similar enterprises here in Buffalo

Donn Esmonde wrote a wonderful column today (Sunday, February 21) in response to Forbes Magazine's silly list of the Top Ten Miserable Cities in which it included Buffalo. Read on:

... I long ago stopped getting defensive about living in an interesting place. If we took seriously every list that chronicles how downtrodden we are, most of us would have long ago leaped off of the Peace Bridge. But it gets ridiculous....What we never get from national media is a list on which we rank among the Top 10... Since they won’t do it, I will:

What a line up!

Buffalo Spree Magazine is Citybration's official print media sponsor this year, and WBFO has just confirmed its status as the Citybration radio sponsor.

With partners like these, Citybration promises to double in size again in 2010!

Welcome aboard...