Revelation 1: I am a sucker for book covers. Revelation 2: Occasionally I buy books/go to events based purely on how awesome their names are. That is precisely how I ended up at the extraordinary Awesome Foundation Melbourne party last night (well, that and the fact that Cheryl Lin of Business Chic recommended it, and she’s a lady with a keen eye for the wonderful). Awesome by name, this foundation are awesome by nature.

Roughly speaking (and I mean ROUGHLY), the Awesome Foundation are a global organisation with local chapters (which makes it sound icky and like Toastmasters or Rotary, but I assure you it’s not). In each chapter, a board is appointed who commit to making a donation (in Melbourne it’s $100 a month per board member). The raised funds go towards sponsoring worthy submissions from the community at large. One such highly successful venture spawned by the Awesome Foundation Melbourne is the sweetly successful Rooftop Honey project. Another is the Tram Sessions project, where musos invade trams and provide tunes for the passengers.

The event had a Melbourne tram theme, and guests were ushered in a goods lift at a secret Richmond location by Awesome Foundation members dressed as long-lost connies. The purpose of the party (apart from making new pals and snacking on tasty treats with fine folks) was to choose one of three well-deserving nominated ‘awesome’ projects as grant winners. Throughout the evening we learnt more about each project: One Girl, Art Truck and YGAP.

Happy Awesome Foundation Party guests enjoyed amazing West Winds Gin cocktails, sweetened by Rooftop Honey.

Jackie represented One Girl, who won the Awesome Foundation Grant. One Girl plan to build sanitation at a Sierra Leone school. Students in Sierra Leone currently have no sanitation, and being bitten by snakes while relieving themselves in the bushes is a daily health hazard for them. Well done One Girl on your great submission!

I loved the little details at the party, such as a huge ‘vision board’ where parties could write about ‘what they need’. The Ruby Assembly contribution? Magic….. and more Annabel Crabb. The vision board was a great place to meet new friends such as law-student Emma.

My favourite submission was The Art Truck. No stranger to vans (remember the dentist van if you went to a rural primary school, or the dread sex education van with Geoffrey the Giraffe *shudder*), Melbourne is now in the lure of gourmet Taco Trucks and Beatbox Burgers. Why then not an Art Truck? I’d go to it. Inset is Art Truck brainstrust Felicity, who even had cut out n’ keep Art Trucks to make there or take home.

Thankyou to Cheryl for inspiring me to get involved with the Awesome Foundation. Any event with such energy and such large blocks of cheese (10 kg blocks of brie and blue cheese at that) gets my tick of approval.