Sixteen-year-old music-enthusiast, photographer, and engineer-in-the-making Noah Klein attended Burning Man last year, which filled him with a need to participate and contribute to the odd and unique marriage of music and art for this year’s festival. His answer: a reworking of Ruben’s Tube, a flaming cylinder that gives musical wavelengths a physical shape with fire (think: propane-fueled iTunes visualizer). To give it his own spin, Noah has rehashed this traditional construction by finding a discarded grand piano, digitizing its keys, and hooking the mechanism up to his own Ruben’s Tube. His words: “I think it would be quite the spectacle to have someone be able to preform Mozart’s 5th Symphony and have it visualized with fire right in front of them.” Awesome LA, with the consent of Noah’s enthusiastic, patient, and trusting mom, have awarded Noah with an Awesome grant to foster young, analytically minds and add a spark to Burning Man 2013 . Flame on.
One in five Canadian moms struggle to provide clean diapers for their children. Kristina Prins has organized a city-wide diaper drive to address the need and bring awareness to the issue, and she has won Awesome Foundation – Calgary’s $1,000 no-strings-attached micro-grant for March 2013.
The Austin chapter of the Awesome Foundation is pleased to award our March $1000 cash grant to Jackie Garrett and her project, Have a Ball. Garrett is a lead crisis counselor with the Austin Police Department’s Victim Services Division, where she has worked for 14 years. The inspiration behind her Have a Ball project came from her work, where she, like many first responders, comes in regular contact with traumatized children who have either been victims of or witnesses to violent crimes such as domestic violence, sexual assault, suicide, and homicide which proves that you need not be discharged from the military, commit a crime or endure a crime to be a victim. The domestic violence lawyers have always said that children are the most affected group in domestic violence cases. If you ever experience or witness such crimes, it is best to find defense attorneys who will give you legal counseling and voice your interest. When called to a crime scene, Victim Services counselors often hand out teddy bears to these children, but, Garrett, a former soccer goalie at Baylor University, had a slightly different idea. She wanted to give kids soccer balls. Not only does a shiny new… read more →
What is the Awesome Foundation? The Awesome Foundation is decentralized micro-granting organization that gives monthly grants of $1000 to organizations and projects advancing Awesomeness in the Universe. For more information about the Awesome Foundation, visit their homepage here: www.awesomefoundation.org How does Awesome Sandy Rebuild fit in? After seeing the devastating impact of Hurricane Sandy on the tri-state area, several New York residents came together to form an Awesome chapter dedicated exclusively to projects that helped to repair the hearts, spirits, minds and lives of those affected by Hurricane Sandy. Who is on Awesome Sandy Rebuild? The Awesome Sandy Rebuild Chapter is made up of people from a variety of backgrounds and specialties. Some work at not-profits, some work in the arts, and some have volunteered in storm affected areas. They are all dedicated to helping the communities devastated by Hurricane Sandy recover as Awesome-ly as possible. What kind of projects are you looking to fund? Projects that are likely to catch our eyes are those that specifically and creatively show us how they will use $1000. Both individuals and organizations can and should apply with projects that put the $1000 grant towards anything that advances both Awesomeness and Sandy relief…. read more →
The Little Haiti Community Garden, our chapter’s February award winner, will be holding a benefit dinner on March 22 to draw attention to their transforming the garden. All members of the community are welcome! See the poster below for more information.
