Awesome Foundation NYC’s next party will be at Babycastles in Brooklyn (285 Kent Avenue) on June 27th, 8 pm. Details coming soon! RSVP on Facebook to get updates

At the end of April the Melbourne Awesome Foundation met for dinner, and chose the Melbourne HackerSpace ArduinoLab as the grant recipient. I have to admit I didn’t totally understand their project, but the energy for their project from all the other micro-trustees was so awesome, I trusted that and gave them my vote too. We called the guys immediately, and they were thrilled to receive the grant. They were working on their project while we were eating dinner on Saturday night! Here’s their blog to explain what they do – I certainly can’t. 🙂 http://tinyurl.com/arduinolab And here’s their submission: Who: Founder of the Melbourne HackerSpace (not-for-profit community technology group) Project: High-school science portable electronics laboratory-in-a-box Awesomeness: Promotes science experimentation in schools with an affordable device that is open and customisable/extensible by teachers and students. How: The Melbourne HackerSpace has completed the initial design/prototype and has the members and track record in completing several previous projects of this complexity. We work closely with Freetronics (http://freetronics.com), a local Melbourne company that can manufacture/distribute open-source hardware designs on behalf of others. Overview: The ArduinoLab is a portable unit consisting of a graphics screen, buttons/knobs for user interface … as well as several… read more →

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 →

It’s with great pleasure that the micro-trustees of AF Sydney can announce our April Recipient! After a very long and intense discussion, we’ve decided to award this months grant to ‘Communion’ – a project by Julia Burns. You can see some of Julia’s work in her video showreel below. From Julia’s submission: The work will be titled ‘Communion’ and is being made for submission to the 2011 Blake Religious Prize. It will feature a short video of two male Aboriginal dancers performing an intimate ballet sequence at the altar of a Catholic church. Filmed at the site of the first Catholic Church in Wollombi and one of the earliest sites of Christian worship in Eastern Australia, this work presents an unconventional scene featuring Aboriginal spirituality and male intimacy within a traditional Christian context. It refers to the adaptability of believers to find spirituality in religions that may not have originally been their own and asks the viewer to question their own ability to adapt to a scene foreign to their expectations. There are obviously some very subjective and sensitive issues around the work that Julia is going to create – in fact, the submission stimulated quite the discussion around our board… read more →

There’s a lot to be said about just letting things happen. But there’s a lot more to be said about making things happen. And, usually, doing that quickly and easily requires a clear path.