Awesome Melbourne 1st Grant – Melbourne City RoofTop Honey
January 30, 2011
Wow. What a beginning.
At our first micro-trustee dinner at Huxable Restaurant , we were faced with a massive task ahead. Deciding which of the 32 AMAZING applicants we had to pick. After much deliberation and a fair bit of discussion around the table, we finally reached a verdict.
We are really excited to announce that Melbourne City Rooftop Honey is the recipient of the first Awesome Foundation Melbourne $1000 grant
You can read their application below:
“My partner and I are hobbyist beekeepers who decided to set up this project as we saw a need to get involved in the worldwide effort to help save the honey bees.
In many other cities around the world, the practice of rooftop beekeeping has been done for decades. With the collapse of honeybees in 2007 (Colony Collapse Disorder), a serious risk is taking place on our natural food supply since the honey bee is crucial in our environment. Since their existence helps with sustainability in food along with the responsibility of pollinating a large proportion of the food that we eat and if the honeybees are in trouble, we are in trouble as well.
Paris, London, Toronto, San Francisco and New York City are only a few of the cities where urban beekeeping is thriving. Why not here in Melbourne we say. As a benefit we also get some true local produce, with less actual food miles as well as help green our city at the same time. A vision of looking forward towards a greener, sustainable future.
Since we started in November last year, we have been overwhelmed with all the support we have been receiving from local businesses and the community.
The way in which the project works is that, we install, maintain and look after the bees at no cost using natural beekeeping methods. What is on offer is an opportunity for people to learn beekeeping and get involved as well as, depending on the honey flow for the season we are looking at sharing a portion of the honey for the gesture.
We extract the honey, which we will do at one of restaurants who have donated their kitchen to help out. The balance of the honey will be blended with care by us to produce our own unique Melbourne City honey which is to be sold back to the city community.
We would use the grant to pay for supplies we use, frames, boxes or the honey extractor we need as to date all $ have been self funded.
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Update: 8th Feb, 2010
(Picture: On the Rooftops of Melbourne handing over “The Bag of Awesome” to Melbourne City Rooftop Honey. Ross, Dan and I were lucky enough to get a live viewing of the bees in action, including seeing the Queen Bee doing her thing. Awesome. Thanks goes to @SecretsHQ for her rooftop and Melbourne City Rooftop Honey for their generous gift of honey they gave to us.)
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For the applicants, your application is still eligible for future grant sessions, and if you would like to update it simply lodge a new application when you are ready. We were all very inspired by the depth and quality of your awesomeness. If you are keen to get your project off the ground and can’t wait till next month, don’t forget to have a look at Australian online resources like PlanBig and Polzable (Formerly Fundbreak).
Keep in touch with us through Twitter at @awesomemelb and see the live coverage from the micro-trustees here.
If you know any Sydney people who would be interested in joining the new chapter there share this post http://bit.ly/e9OyHa.
To see what has been happening globally, have a look through the State of Awesome 2010 report , Huffington Post and Boing Boing .
Stay Awesome.
Eddie, Ross, and Awesome Melbourne Micro-Trustee Board.