With Thanksgiving fast approaching, don’t forget to submit your awesome idea for the October Pitch Party! Applications are open until 11:59pm on Wednesday 9th of October. I will be contacting pitchers starting on Friday Oct 11. I know there are a ton of truly awesome ideas out there and I look forward to seeing your idea in the application forms! You can submit your applications at www.awesomekingston.org. If you are reading this blog then you are already in the right place, just click on the pink button that says “Apply for a Grant”. While you are here on the website, you can get some inspiration by reading about last month’s grant recipient The Smile Team. Such a great yet simple idea with tons of potential impact. Big or small ideas, we will accept them all! We are also recruiting for full trustees and guest trustees. If you are interested please email us at mail@awesomekingston.org. And if you are looking for more awesome updates then follow us on twitter or facebook. Hope to see you all at the October Pitch Party!

The following is a guest post, written by Chris Rawlins from The Scholar Match— The consistently rising cost of higher education has left many bright and high-achieving high school students in the Bay Area without the financial resources to attain their goals, dreams, and ambitions of a college degree.  As a result, I have partnered with other Silicon Valley professionals in starting a new financial scholarship fund through the combined organizations of Indiegogo.com and ScholarMatch. Our goal is simple.  To provide college scholarships for 12 very special and deserving students in the Bay area.  This program will also be offering more than just financial assistance.  We will follow these young adults through their college years, providing support and mentoring as they face the many challenges of a post-secondary education. We need your help.  The 12 scholarships will require a combined total of only $16,150 dollars.  We can easily meet this goal with only 646 donations of only $25.  It is our hope that the wide reaching arms of the social media will help our Indiegogo Campaign to quickly “GO VIRAL”.  All funds exceeding the original $16,150 will be used to help even more students from the California, Bay Area area…. read more →

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has announced a $20,000 grant to support and expand the grant-giving capacity of the Awesome Foundation Miami chapter. For more details, please see the press release or visit the grant page. Since awarding our first grant in January (a meditation program for high school students), we have received hundreds of proposals. Applicants have spanned every geographic area of Greater Miami.  They’ve come from a diverse group of applicants: from students to artists, business professionals to residents of homeless shelters. As a consequence, we’ve been fortunate to fund a range of awesome and uniquely Miami ideas such as surfing classes for kids, a community garden in Little Haiti and a mural display by local artists in Wynwood. We’ve also learned that $1,000 a month, while it provides enough to kick-start many projects, doesn’t go very far when you have so many applicants. Multiple times, instead of awarding a grant, we’ve brainstormed how to connect an applicant with someone who is working on complementary projects or an organization that might fund the idea. We hope to foster more of these connections that might not happen otherwise. Thanks to Knight’s support, we will continue to fund great ideas and build connections across our city through social… read more →

Thrilled recently to be contacted by Robi Esialimba, who is interested in starting up an Awesome Foundation chapter in Nairobi! Him and his co-founder Weldon Kennedy are putting out an open call for trustees, so drop a line to Robi if you’re interested or know someone who might be someone great for them to team up with. Here’s their pitch for the new chapter: Nairobians for an Awesome Nairobi – Join the Awesome Foundation Nairobi Chapter Nairobi is a bustling, happening city, full of verve and a palpable mojo attracting Kenyans from upcountry and foreigners in equal measure to experience its offerings. With its swanky bars and restaurants, artsy events and concerts, hip and yuppie culture, it feels like it has a lot going for it. But Nairobi has a dark side to it too: widespread poverty, spiraling crime, squalid public spaces, dust and pollution and unforgettably the pain in the backside matatus! Some of us look forward longingly to the next election hoping that, maybe just maybe, the next county or national government will get its act together only for those hopes to be brutally dashed – again. Many of us feel jaded and have implicitly or explicitly decided to “accept and… read more →

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