The Awesome Foundation – Toronto

The Toronto Awesome Foundation had lots of fun at Habourfront Center for Canada Day!

We’ll be at the Gladstone on Wednesday Aug 1st, 7-8pm, if you want to come watch our next pitch night. Mark your calendars!

Created by awesome volunteer (and past Awesome Foundation applicant) Gregory Alan Elliott. Cool, huh? Wanna get in touch with Greg? Ping him here: @greg_a_elliott.

The Toronto Awesome Foundation’s April prize-winner, “Cardboard Fort Night,” came to beautiful duct-taped and beer-soaked fruition last night. The creativity and paper-cuts on display were awe-inspiring, as you’ll see from the event photos. Huge congratulations to Sherwin, aka Inconsolable Cat, for his awesome event-wrangling and coveted Lifetime Awesome Achievement Award. (Sherwin alone contributed 30% of the April project submissions — the man is a machine.)

Why cardboard forts? As Sherwin put it:

Like a cat, I think my favourite toy was always plain brown cardboard boxes. The holy grail when I was a kid was to get those discarded refrigerator boxes, because they were so big and creamy smooth. You got the feeling that you could make anything out of that. The idea behind this night is to bring back that feeling.

Judging by all the smiles and ludicrous structures: mission accomplished!

Goes to the guy who proposed that we have a ToplessTO day where everyone (everyone!) goes around without a shirt on. And who would use the $1,000 to buy himself a new car.

Well done.  =)

An unbelievable response to the Toronto Awesome Foundation. You rock, Toronto+Canada+World. All of this within the last few days…

Profile on the front page of today’s The Star.

Interview with OpenMatt on Metro Morning yesterday.

Article in Toronto Life.

Profile on BoingBoing.

Profile and interview with Tim Hwang (founder) in Huffington Post.

Article in BlogTO.

Article on CityTV.com. And CityTV is going to cover our launch party on Feb 24th.

Setting up an interview with Fearless Fred at The Edge / 102.1.

Over 15,000 views to the site.

The volunteer efforts of PR-wizard extraordinaire, Gavin D.

Corey Mintz is going to make us supper while we decide who gets the first prize.

A mass explosion of Twitter traffic and new subs to @awesomefound.

Already getting a waiting list of people who want to join the Board. (Start another chapter?!?)

A new ‘Battle of Ontario’ flame war going with Ottawa re: who is awesomer.

Chad is  working to launch Awesome Montreal. Also new start-ups underway in the Gulf region and Seattle. Awesome LA has over 350 people coming to their launch party.

And most importantly… Coming on 40+ submissions to make Toronto awesome, including:

• Guerilla stealth classical music raves
• World’s largest sparkler party along Yonge Street, hosted by a clown
• Musical pieces composed as palindromes (sound the same both ways) timed to the length of the trip between subway stations. Launched with a late night live performance on the trains.
• An ‘Interac’ card for receipts
• Big-ass karaoke party at Yonge & Dundas Square with the lyrics on all the digital billboards
• Hand sanitizers and lotion at gas station pumps
• ‘You’re going too fast’ signs in school zones
• A front-of-the-car brake light invention by an ex cop
• A young band needing studio time for their first album
• And, of course, our very first submission: Laser Monkeys.

Keep it up! This is amazing.