After more than a year of stewing, and then more than a year pretending we were close to launching, AF Winnipeg is proud to finally announce its first call for submissions. The deadline is Thursday the 22nd, and the grant will be awarded on Thursday the 29th. Winnipeg, Manitoba is a city where many people can find ways to live cheaply, and so it’s become a cultural centre for Canada. That cheapness brings other difficulties with it, though; it was very difficult to find people, outside of rich (and too-busy) businessmen, who could spare $100 every month. At AF Winnipeg, there are two main things we did to keep costs down: We created a pool of ‘nano-trustees’, who give $100 every two or three months. We need a larger number of them, but we can rotate through the pool to fill any extra seats each month. They don’t get those sort-of-perks the micro-trustees get, like having a seat named after them, but this opens us up to allow people to become part of this process a single time if they wanted. We allow a groups of individuals from an organization to create a micro-trustee seat. The face might change from… read more →

November’s Awesome Ottawa award goes to Margaret Tourond-Townson to support organic gardening by seniors in retirement homes. Margaret, a senior herself, will work with fellow Canadian Organic Growers volunteers Rob Danforth, David Townson, and Sara Holzman to expand a program that was started as a pilot this summer. “This past year has been so satisfying to see seniors gardening and loving it,” says Margaret. “We even had a Harvest Celebration with seniors helping to prepare the food that they grew themselves!” They also hope to connect the seniors in the program with children involved in the successful Growing Up Organic program, which was active in 26 schools in Ottawa this year and will be in more than 50 in 2013. To learn more about the Senior Organic Gardeners program, visit http://cog.ca/ottawa/goo/.

Mark your calendars: on Thursday, 15 November, is Awesome Kingston’s One-Year-Anniversary Public Pitch Party night!  We’re starting off at 6:30PM in the St. Lawrence Ballroom Salon B of the Residence Inn Marriott at 7 Earl St.  Please RSVP here right away – and invite your friends and family!   Awesome Kingston has been around for a full year in the Limestone City, having held its inaugural pitch party in November 2011.  Since then, we’ve funded some great projects geared toward making Kingston even more awesome – and we’re really excited about the line-up of pitches for this month.  By the end of the night, we will have given away $10,000 in no-strings-attached microgrants to these local projects.  Everyone’s invited to attend, listen, participate, and enjoy! This will also be our last pitch party for 2012, since we do not hold one in December (although we will have Awesome Hours), but start marking every third Thursday in your calendars for 2013, since we’ll be continuing full throttle in January!  You’re not going to want to miss this night of fun, innovation, inspiration, and engagement. Remember to follow us on Twitter and Like our Facebook Page to stay in touch; if you’re not the social media addict type, just subscribe… read more →

Awesome Foundation – Calgary goes retro, lumberjack style, as we’re pleased to announce that Karilynn Thompson is our $1,000 micro-grant recipient for the month of October with “The 2nd Annual Log Driver’s Waltz: A Plaid Party!”

Solving the world’s beer storage problem. Last night Awesome Squared got together at Claremont Tonic in South Yarra (go there – real good), to eat all the Asian food and hear Andrew tell us his best pick-up line to date. We won’t spoil it for you, but maybe you’ll be lucky enough to hear it from the man himself. This month’s grant when to a simple but clever idea that will hopefully soon become a household name. The Beer End. “It’s like a bookend for your beer.” You should get the general gist. It’s a problem that most of us face, every day: Stacking beer or wine bottles in the fridge, without them rolling about or taking up too much space. We all like to have beer – or cruisers (ew) or whatever in the fridge for when friends come round. So now we can have more and they won’t move about. Good one, Zac Martin. The money will go towards enlisting an industrial designer to make the first prototype.