The South Bay Awesome Foundation is uber excited to name SKYvision as the latest recipient of an awesome grant.  Students Karing for Youth Vision (or SKYvision) was founded in 2005 by a group of optometry students hoping to make an impact in their local community.  They have certainly done just that and this group seems to be on their way to great things.  Beginning with just two students and an idea, the group has grown into a structured organization with a treasurer and Faculty advisor.   SKYvision’s goal is to provide quality glasses for young people who otherwise could not afford it.  Imagine you are a 3rd grade student who struggles to stay focused in class and is falling behind in school, all because you can’t see the chalk board and you do not have the means to get glasses.  Where do you go?  What do you do?  That’s where SKYvision comes in.  The process starts with the donation of frames through the Optometric Fraternity Omega Delta.  Next SKYvision uses at-cost lenses from their school lab.  Finally, it’s a matter of matching up those in need with a fresh set of spectacles, which happens at the school‘s (South California College of… read more →

We’re always getting tons of questions about whether a specific project or idea is eligible for a monthly microgrant – and let’s be fair, awesomeness is pretty hard to define specifically!  We all have different ideas on what that means, so we’ve tried to narrow it down a little bit based on what we prefer (read: always exceptions to be made!) to see from applications to Awesome Foundation – Kingston.  We want you and your project to succeed, and we also want to be realistic about expectations.  When in doubt, get in touch with us!   Is Your Idea Awesome? We’re looking for awesome ideas – whether they come from companies, organizations, teams, or individuals. The project should be something new, exciting, and unique; not an existing, ongoing, or recurring project. It should have impact on the local Kingston community, and the more people it involves or affects, the better!   We’re not looking to fund fundraisers, long-term established projects, overhead, marketing, or administration. We’re looking for small, agile undertakings where $1,000 is all that’s needed, or at least the majority of it – not a drop in the bucket of a massive budget. $1,000 is not a huge sum of money,… read more →

  The winner of January’s LA Awesome Grant is the Free to Be Me Drum Circle – the life’s work of badass drummer and community organizer Sabina Sandoval: it’s a non-profit, all volunteer, charity group helping at risk kids, kids in grades K – 12, elders, people with special needs, and prison inmates by providing loving, educational drumming events. We go into convalescent hospitals where the residents can enjoy, and participate in, the music. We stimulate them by lifting their spirits and improving their motor skills. Our 1K Awesome Grant will go toward much needed repairs on her over 400 (!!!) drums, which Sabina carts all around LA hosting her enormous, infectious drum circles that lure participants in to let loose, feel the beat, and find their own rhythm.   Sabina Sandoval is, indeed, awesome. Another thing that’s awesome – this grant pushes The Awesome Foundation over the $400,000 mark in grants given to awesome projects from over 60 chapters around the world!!!

Awesome Foundation – Calgary’s January 2013 $1,000 micro-grant went to Neil Egsgard with “Kensington Interaction,” a space built by Neil to showcase local knowledge and to connect community in the Calgary neighbourhood of Sunnyside.

This January, the New York City chapter has decided to fund a project that combines mental health awareness with telekinesis! Zachary Valenti’s “Uplift Yourself, Uplift the World” project will stage touring mindfulness carnivals on college campuses, where students will be able to learn about mental health resources and practice mindfulness.  The centerpiece of these carnivals, which Awesome NYC is helping to fund, will be a large tower containing floating globes which rise or fall depending on the signal from an EEG headset worn by a student volunteer.  So if you wear the headset and uplift yourself, you can quite literally uplift (a scale model of) the world!  This awesome application of 21st-century technology will help draw traffic to the mindfulness carnivals, spreading awareness about mental health. Read more on our January project page!