Art is good. Big Boats are great.  Big Art Boats are AWESOME. The Los Angeles Awesome Foundation is proud to award its February Awesome grant to LA-based artist Yaron Michael Hakim. With help from our $1,000 bucks –  and his own two hands – Hakim is building a 22-foot sailing vessel known as a proa, which he will sail 22 miles across the sea to Catalina Island in mid-March as part of his greater body of work focused on travel and life-journey.  Along his two-day trip, all by his lonesome, he’ll will be capturing stills and video that will be used later for an exhibit on April 25, 2013 at the University of California – Irvine. You can track the progress of this truly awesome live action art piece, check out unutea.wordpress.com/

The South Bay Awesome Foundation is uber excited to name SKYvision as the latest recipient of an awesome grant.  Students Karing for Youth Vision (or SKYvision) was founded in 2005 by a group of optometry students hoping to make an impact in their local community.  They have certainly done just that and this group seems to be on their way to great things.  Beginning with just two students and an idea, the group has grown into a structured organization with a treasurer and Faculty advisor.   SKYvision’s goal is to provide quality glasses for young people who otherwise could not afford it.  Imagine you are a 3rd grade student who struggles to stay focused in class and is falling behind in school, all because you can’t see the chalk board and you do not have the means to get glasses.  Where do you go?  What do you do?  That’s where SKYvision comes in.  The process starts with the donation of frames through the Optometric Fraternity Omega Delta.  Next SKYvision uses at-cost lenses from their school lab.  Finally, it’s a matter of matching up those in need with a fresh set of spectacles, which happens at the school‘s (South California College of… read more →

  The winner of January’s LA Awesome Grant is the Free to Be Me Drum Circle – the life’s work of badass drummer and community organizer Sabina Sandoval: it’s a non-profit, all volunteer, charity group helping at risk kids, kids in grades K – 12, elders, people with special needs, and prison inmates by providing loving, educational drumming events. We go into convalescent hospitals where the residents can enjoy, and participate in, the music. We stimulate them by lifting their spirits and improving their motor skills. Our 1K Awesome Grant will go toward much needed repairs on her over 400 (!!!) drums, which Sabina carts all around LA hosting her enormous, infectious drum circles that lure participants in to let loose, feel the beat, and find their own rhythm.   Sabina Sandoval is, indeed, awesome. Another thing that’s awesome – this grant pushes The Awesome Foundation over the $400,000 mark in grants given to awesome projects from over 60 chapters around the world!!!

Planet Orchestra Performing for Foundation Board Members on October 19th, 2012   What happens when you combine curious kids, eager parents and a whole bucket load of orchestral instruments?  You get planet Orchestra.  Los Angeles South Bay Awesome Foundation (yes, that’s a mouthful isn’t it?) was excited to the brim to award it’s second grant to a growing group of devoted musicians based out of Lawndale California.  These musicians aren’t your ordinary orchestra, they are youth that are given free lessons, an instrument and (most valuable of all) a nurturing environment in which “to come together to achieve the common good of making music.”  Planet orchestra has grown, from its inception in 2010 with a group of eight children, to a thriving group of professional musicians, volunteers, parents and children. Based in Lawndale, Planet Orchestra has grand ideas and does not plan to stop with just a few lessons to a few kids.  This energetic group of social entrepreneurs hopes to use its existing system to spring board into school classrooms, dance studios, and (in the words of Buzz Lightyear) to infinite and beyond!  There’s little doubt that Planet Orchestra will continue to impact lives and make our world a… read more →

The National Marrow Donor Program really really really needs more minorities (who are harder to match) and more young people (whose cells make for more successful transplants) to register as potential bone marrow donors. BE THE MATCH ON CAMPUS is their push to make this happen, at 35 colleges and universities in SoCal – including UCLA on 10/24. Besides having to convince college students that it’s really NOT as scary as you think to be a donor, BE THE MATCH also has to pay for testing all these guys – and it’s not cheap. So the LA chapter of The Awesome Foundation is giving this month’s 1K awesome grant to BE THE MATCH ON CAMPUS to pay for 40 UCLA students to be put on the national registry — and hopefully be the match for the someone who needs it. xoxo The Awesome Foundation