Awesome DC have been busy bees this Spring! In part inspired by our wildly energetic April grantees – GirlTrek. I talked to Vanessa about the project and what the Awesome grant means for them. Warning: Get ready to be inspired! What is GirlTrek all about, what do you do, and who is it for? GirlTrek puts the Move back in Movement. 80% of Black women are overweight.  Researchers predict that 100% of us will be overweight by 2034.  We were two ordinary Black women, with no real health background or health role models.  To get moving – we set goals and started walking everyday.  In a few months, Vanessa ran a half marathon for the first time, and Morgan went on her very first backpacking trip – 50 miles! But our personal victories weren’t enough to shake the haunting statistics that implicated our families and friends. We had inspired them by our own transformations. We knew they were listening and watching, but how could we get them to join us?  Better yet, how could we ignite a national movement of motivated women?  One step at a time. GirlTrek is a 10-week walking challenge and a call to action. Each spring we recruit… read more →

You may recall back in December, our Awesome Applicants in DC were so… well… Awesome, that we had a hard time choosing.  A very close runner up for the grant was the Walker Jones Kitchen Classroom. Now, our guest Trustee for April, Miriam Schwedt and her Associate of Awesome, Katie Heller (both from the seriously awesome Peloton Projects) have picked up the Walker Jones cause and need your support! On May 1, Miriam and Katie would like you to join us at Walker-Jones for a day of Service to help them with their mission to teach kids about nutrition, nature, and how sowing seeds of hard work can pay off! The day will include working with Walker-Jones kids and families in their kitchen garden, followed by a Happy Hour and fundraiser!  For more information and to RSVP, check out the event page on facebook – get ready for a great day!! Although many kids at Walker-Jones come from tough situations, the staff have taken initiative to start an amazing kitchen garden, through which they are teaching students about gardening, nutrition, and soon, they hope, about cooking with the produce they have grown! We want to support Walker Jones in this… read more →

We just awarded our March Grant to the super talented Experience Counterpoint. Now, if you’re in DC this week, you will have the opportunity to Experience Counterpoint for yourself at our launch party this Wednesday 23rd March. From 6:30 pm at One Lounge: 1606 20th Street NW • Washington, DC20009. More details and tickets here: http://dcawesome.eventbrite.com/. Counterpoint will be joined by a host of other Awesome people and projects in the “Awesome Showcase”, where you will have a chance to get to know them, learn about their projects, and donate “Tokens of Awesome” (which we will convert into cold hard “cee ay dollar sign ache” at the end of the night) to help further their awesome projects! The showcase will represent the wide range of projects we hear from and will include such awesomeness as: A life-size fabric sculpture of I Dream of Jeanne’s bottle Painting with Light Hybrid Robot Instruments A new type of drip filtration system A Found Art and Photogrpahy Exhibition Scrap Action And of course our previous Awesome Grantees – FabLab, Ward 8 Farmers Market, and the Petworth Jazz Festival. The party is open to everyone awesome, but priority will be given to ticket holders, so… read more →

Have you experienced awesomeness? Well Experience Counterpoint might get you close. They’re a guerrilla chamber orchestra dedicated to pushing the boundaries of classical music and performance art who won the March DC Awesome grant for their project “Audio Warhol”. We hope that with our support, Experience CounterPoint can bring their next exciting performance to a wider audience to experience awesomeness! You can listen to some of Counterpoint’s work here: http://www.experiencecounterpoint.org/experience/listen.html Here’s what they had to say about winning the Awesome Foundation Grant: Winning the Awesome Foundation DC grant is something that couldn’t come at a better time for us.  We have recently finished a few amazing events, but we are still bursting with innovative ideas!  While we would love to not have to think about it, money is definitely a major concern when we are creating and executing a project.  This grant will help us bring to life one of our new projects: Audio Warhol. The Awesome Foundation’s support will help spur an exciting and artistically sophisticated experience for both the audience and CounterPoint to enjoy.  It will be truly Awesome and we can’t wait to plan it. CounterPoint is about inclusion, bringing music and art to all people.  As… read more →

We’re throwing a party on March 23 and we want you there! Word on the street says it’s going to be AWESOME! The Awesome Foundation DC has been around for a few months now, we’ve funded a handful of spectacular projects, and have been overwhelmed with all the awesomely enthusiastic applications we have received from our community here. You guys are truly… well shucks… you know. So now it’s time to share that awesomeness with the rest of the District. We hope will join us to officially launch the Awesome Foundation DC and celebrate just how awesome you all are. Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011, 6 – 10 p.m DISTRICT, 2473 18th Street NW, Washington, DC 20009  (in the heart of Adams Morgan) Get in and grab your ticket now: http://dcawesome.eventbrite.com/ Your $10 Ticket to Awesome includes: 1 drink and 3 Awesome Tokens to donate to a selection of people who will be demo’ing their awesome ideas! ($15 = 8 Awesome Tokens, $20 = 13 Awesome Tokens…) There will also be opportunities to share your very own awesome ideas, and of course, awesome DJ’s, drinks and dancing. Hope you can make it! Tell your friends. All welcome. It’s going to be…… read more →