July was an especially awesome month for the Melbourne Awesome Foundation. We were able to give not one, but two awesome projects something to get excited about. Swarm, Australia’s only online community management conference asked us to pick an awesome community project to give a free weekend pass to participate and be featured in what will no doubt be one awesome conference for community managers from all over Australia on the 13-14 September. The conference is made by community managers, for community managers, and mixes practical tips with provocative big picture thinking. It’s a transdisciplinary event, with contributors from a diverse range of industries and academia. It’s a peer support community, intended to give community managers in Australia a voice, and facilitate dynamic professional development. (If this sounds like something you’d like to attend you can register here) We had a large number of community applications to choose from and only managed to find one lemon in the bunch, The Lemon Tree Project. The Lemon Tree Project is about creating a place in every street for neighbors to congregate and share. Their vision is to get a communal lemon tree and a park bench in as many streets and reserves around the world as possible. Awesome,… read more →

Where would you be today without your education? Would you know how to read or write? Would you be able to support yourself? Melbourne’s June grant was awarded to One Girl, an organization that’s made it their mission to educate girls from the poorest rural communities of Sierra Leone, West Africa. One Girl was founded in 2009 by Chantelle Baxter and David Dixon and has given 100 girls the opportunity for an education and a better life. Their upcoming campaign Do It in a Dress will raise $25,000 to send another 50 girls to school by 2012. The difference an education in Sierra Leone can make is astounding.  See what these girls are up against: – 1 in 6 chance of attending high school. – 62% chance they’ll be married before their 18th birthday. – 50% chance they’ll be sexually abused before they turn 18 and it’s almost guaranteed that they’ll experience some kind of sexual violence in their lifetime. Do It in a Dress plans on raising the $25,000 by recruiting 100 “rock star” bloggers from around the world to set a personal challenge for themselves like run 5K, go to a yoga class, bungee jump or just go to… read more →