Three awesome things happened last Wednesday in Melbourne.
The Melbourne Awesome Foundation turned one.
We threw a party.
We gave away $4,317 in our first mega grant.
We got together at
Inspire 9‘s co-working space and were greeted at the door by probably the only Tram Inspector we ever will be happy to see.
We’d come together on this night on the common ground of a few things: we like to eat, we like to drink, and we like to spread awesomeness. Miss Tresna Lee, you are an epic party planner and many thanks go your way. Here’s what the night entailed:
– Rooftop Honey: One of our previous grant winners gave everyone a sample of their honey tasting spectrum; honeypots from each suburb of Melbourne. We have to say, Northside takes the cake.
–The
West Winds Gin boys got everyone talking: Sabre gin, matured lemon juice, crumbled Rooftop Honeycomb – need we say more.
–Miss Chu, the Rice Paper Queen gave us some incredible chow.- Little Creatures provided us some nice brews.
–
Monk Bohdi Dharma made us believe that perhaps vegans do it better, with some ridiculously good cupcakes.
-10 kilos of Calendar Cheese stole the show.- Fabulous door prizes from Market Lane.
Simon Taylor was MC for the night, probing the mega grant finalists on why they deserved to win. Here’s a quick recap:
-YGAP’s
Five Cent Project: Collecting and doing something useful with the abundance of unwanted 5 cent pieces in Australia, totalling $150 million. This something useful involves the support of communities in Melbourne, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bangladesh and Ghana.
–The Art Truck by Felicity Strong: Taking the food truck concept one step further, Felicity plans to make a roving art truck to showcase local artists at festivals and around Australia at different events.
– One Girl’s
Toilet Project: One Girl has already achieved a lot of awesome, sending over 100 girls to school in Sierra Leone. There next mission is to build two secure toilets within the school, allowing for not only the health but safety of their students. This is all stemmed from an incident where one of their students was bitten by a snake when walking to find a bathroom. So much awesome, and one tough decision. We debated, we persuaded, and eventually we all had to choose.
The wining project by just one vote was One Girl.
Kudos to a very worthy cause.