This past November, we at Awesome Foundation Winnipeg awarded our first grant. It went to Lunches with Love, a small charitable organization run by 12-year-old Nate Unrau and his mother Elsie. They accept donations of winter clothing and food items, and use that to provide Winnipeg’s Main Street Project with sandwiches and warm clothing. Lunches with Love was started in October of 2012, after Nate attended an event called We Day, at which youth are are encouraged to make a difference in their communities. On their first day, they donated 47 lunches to the Main Street Project. Now, Nate is being invited to speak to the other students of his old school about how to do what he did. Every second Saturday since then, the Unraus gather volunteers in their home and pack hundreds of lunches: Tuna salad, egg salad, oranges, bottled water, and sometimes other things. Every Sandwich Day since they started, Lunches with Love has made more and more sandwiches. Their original goals were for 100-130 lunches each time. Nate and Elsie were able to put the Awesome Foundation’s grant to quick use. The day after the award ceremony, they braved the bitter cold to buy 120 pieces… read more →

It’s been a few weeks since we handed out our FIRST GRANT to the totally rad and ever-worthy Arthur Morgan for his project, Gather Baltimore. That picture to the right is the dashing Morgan getting his cool cash dough from Awesome Baltimore Trustee, Briony Hynson, and Guest Trustee, Dixon Stetler! Yippee!Our kick-ass trustee, Chloe Gallagher talked to the Gather Baltimore folks to gain some insight into how and why they do the work they do. Awesome Baltimore: How did the idea of Gather Baltimore originate? When did you decide that you needed to make it a reality? Gather Baltimore: The epiphany hit Arthur Morgan at the Farmers Market one Sunday morning. Just before noon, when the market was to end, vendors would begin throwing away food they could not sell. Morgan watched as hungry people rummaged through the discarded food, even picking up produce that had fallen on the ground. “I said, ‘Holy Moly! Look at all this food that is going to waste,’” Morgan says. So Morgan, himself an urban farmer, devised a way to salvage some of the scraps by collecting the food in bins and transporting it himself by pickup truck to Our Daily Bread, a nonprofit that serves daily meals… read more →

On Thursday, 21 Feb 2013, Awesome Kingston gathered at the beautiful Renaissance Event Venue to hear some great pitches from the community and host Awesome Hours. Check out how it went!

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.

Need some more awesome in your February?  Join us at 6:30PM, Thursday, 21 February at the Renaissance Event Venue for our February Pitch Party!  Pitches kick off at 7:00PM, so grab a drink and a front row seat before then.  Spread the word, and make sure you RSVP on the Facebook Event so we know you’re coming!  Everyone is welcome, and the event, as always, is free.   Stick around after the event, because we’ll be having Awesome Hours after the $1,000 no-strings-attached microgrant is given away.  What are Awesome Hours?  They’re like office hours, but way more fun.  It’s a time for anyone to sit down with trustees, volunteers, past winners, and like-minded people to talk about anything – the Awesome Foundation, a pitch idea you’ve had, getting involved, or just chat about whatever’s on your mind. Awesome Kingston has been around for over a 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.  We give away $1,000 no-strings-attached microgrants funded by 10 trustees from the community.  Got an idea yourself?  Come out to the pitch night to see what we’re all about, and apply through the website!… read more →