We are thrilled to announce the newest addition to our funded projects list with this month’s grant recipient: We Radiate! Did you know that New York City landfills over 1 million tons of organic material annually? We Radiate meets the challenges of two urgent concerns: solid waste management and energy. Their vision enables communities to create, maintain, and possess their own energy generating locally from compost. Read more about the project here.

AwesomeNYC is proud to announce their August 2013 grant to Climate Models Calendar, which will create a calendar featuring pictures of climate scientists and their favorite dataset, chart or climate phenomenon.  We were impressed by this project’s new take on communicating the work done by these researchers. Photography is a powerful medium that instantly connects subject and viewer. Our Climate Models calendar project brings climate research into the realm of the everyday public. The photographs break barriers between scientists and non-scientists — literally bringing a face to this important research. Most of what the public knows about climate science comes from distillations of scientific papers. The people behind these papers, their passion and their everyday working environments are rarely seen. In collaboration with Jordan Matter, a NYT bestselling photographer (Dancers Among Us), our Climate Models project will create powerful and compelling portraits of the researchers. For more information on the calendar, visit the project page!

On Tuesday, May 14th AwesomeNYC announced our May Grantee at an Awesome Party at Culturefix on the Lower East Side. We threw the party with Gwen Li (aka Gracie Jin), a friend of Awesome who did a reading from her debut novel The Switch Sisters! Along with the grant announcement, we had live music, nametags from our April grantee Nametag Day (who tilted their Crowdtilt campaign this week!), and a grant update from our October Grantee, Dave Adams from the Acoustic Guitar project. Dave just got back from filming in Haiti and had some stories and footage to share. After all the updates and book reading, we asked Gracie to announce our May Grant, which went to the Bronx Documentary Center for their Movies at Sundown series. The Bronx is home to 1.4 million people and there are only 4 movie theaters, none of which show documentary films. May’s Awesome Grant will help the expand the Movies at Sundown program, which is an incredibly meaningful community resource in an underserved area. For more information on the Bronx Documentary Center and Movies at Sundown, check out the project page here!

The New York chapter is proud to announce that our April grant has been awarded to Nametag Day, which on June 1, 2013 will distribute 200,000-nametags around New York City. The purpose of the event is to get people to talk to each other. But more than that, it’s about bringing a culture of openness to this sometimes standoffish city. Read more on our April project page!  And don’t forget to follow Awesome NYC on Twitter and Facebook.

The New York chapter is proud to announce that our February grant has been awarded to local artist Bundith Phunsombatlert to fund his project “Wayfinding: 100 NYC Public Sculptures.” Bundith’s plan is to install graphic signposts showing the direction and distance of 100 pieces of public sculpture in eight parks scattered across New York’s five boroughs.  Tourists and locals alike will be guided by these signposts to take fuller advantage of New York’s wealth of existing public art — and the signposts will be a work of art themselves, in both a visual and participatory sense. Read more on our February project page!  And don’t forget to follow Awesome NYC on Twitter and Facebook.