Congratulations to Lena and her organization Beecuz!

Beecuz is a youth-led organization that seeks to develop a future generation of passionate, confident and compassionate people by inspiring critical and creative thinking through education, awareness and design.

We believe that everyone has an inherent talent, an authentic personality and the potential to succeed, even if it comes in a unique form. Beecuz uses education, awareness and design to provoke thought and discussion around current social standards while establishing self-efficacy and self-compassion.

Congratulations, Brenda!

2Serve is a non profit organization that does outreach projects for the community of Waterloo Region. They have seasonal and ongoing projects feeding and assisting people in need.  Please consider checking out and contributing to her good work at 2Serve.

Congratulations to Grace at gracefulbricks.wordpress.com who is January’s winner!  She’s planning a great event to showcase many international and local Lego artists such as herself and create more knowledge and dialogue around mental health.  Good luck Grace, we look forward to attending what will surely be an awesome event!

From its humble beginnings in 1964 CKMS has gone through many ups and downs, but has always provided an important voice for the community.  They are this month’s deserving winner of our KW Awesome Foundation grant.  Set your dial to 102.7 FM to listen to an awesome and diverse line up of shows!  Congratulations and thanks for making KW awesome!  http://radiowaterloo.ca/listen/

The Region of Waterloo has a country side boundary line (see map: http://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/regionalGovernment/resources/ROPMap7new.pdf) that it created to protect farmland and sensitive environmental areas. This line faces regular challenges from housing developers looking to create new suburbs. The last time that the line was challenged, the Region was forced to push the boundary line back.

To protect the country side boundary line it is important to embed it in the culture of our community by building awareness of both the existence of the boundary line, and its significance for the sustainable development of Waterloo Region. So let’s have a party that celebrates the boundary line and all that it gives us!

This summer, we will be hosting Waterloo City Limits, a bike and folk music festival just past the St. Jacobs Farmer’s Market at the Waterloo Rod & Gun Club.

Here’s how it will work:

Cycling: The circumference of the boundary line is approximately 120km. The day will start with cyclists having a friendly & fun ride that (as much as possible) follows the line.

Activities: Back at the Rod & Gun Club, bike tuneups will be offered, a course will be setup to teach safe biking skills to kids, and local sustainability & cycling groups will have booths for those looking to engage beyond this day.

Food: Super tasty locally-sourced food will be available.

Folk: Richard Garvey is a great local musician who has put on a small folk fest the last few years with other local artists. Richard will be hosting a local folk music fest at the Rod & Gun Club to welcome cyclists as they ride in and engage attendees who aren’t cycling.

Cyclists & attendees will be invited to donate a suggested amount, and food will be sold at accessible prices. Local craft beer will also be sold. Profits will seed a boundary line action fund to pay expenses of local NGOs if they need to defend the boundary line in future.

Founded in 2011, the KW Poetry Slam is a series of community-building spoken word poetry events in Kitchener and Waterloo, Ontario. KWPS is an official slam community under Spoken Word Canada.

By bringing together diverse artists in Kitchener Waterloo, the KW Poetry Slam builds a strong arts community by hosting a series of spoken word poetry events in Kitchener and Waterloo. The regular season slam series sends a team to the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.

This month’s KW Awesome Foundation $1000 grant is going to send the KW Slam Poetry Team to Winnipeg to participate at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word from October 23 -30th.  Congratulations, you’re all awesome!

About

Homeless in Waterloo is a social project that provides an opportunity for our community to connect with people who are experiencing or who have experienced homelessness through their photos and stories.

By having this connection made online, it allows our community members to offer support at their own pace, on their own time, and at a level they are comfortable with.

There are so many organizations and groups in the Waterloo Region that provide the basic necessities for those experiencing homelessness and we greatly appreciate their tremendous efforts. We want to build on that strong foundation and provide people in our community with a genuine friendship and a sense of belonging.

The stories we share are only the beginning of our journey with them and along the way, we grow to become their friends and do our very best to help them achieve their goals – whether that be filling the fridge with groceries, learning how to use a computer, or sleeping on a new mattress.

To better help individuals achieve their goals, we’ve created the Homeless in Waterloo Network. The purpose of this network is to encourage open discussion on homelessness, provide a medium for anyone to share new ideas for our project, but more importantly, pool our community’s resources to help those who are in need.

www.facebook.com/groups/homelessinwaterloo

Our most recent Pitch Night at The Boathouse saw seven excellent groups pitching many compelling projects! This was certainly a tough decision!

The winner of the $1,000 grant was the Outdoor Classroom & School Yard Greening project, from Centennial Public School in Cambridge:

This group is building an outdoor classroom space and nature-based playground for use by their students and the local community at large. They plan to create a natural area, pathways and additions for art, exploration, and nature study to complement their outdoor learning curriculum.

This KW Awesome grant is funding a specific portion of the playground/sensory areas: art panels, texture-play sand area, pathways (for running!) and a bridge. They’re also hoping to add a log climbing structure that will promote gross motor skills and physical fitness (disguised as fun!).

Here are the other awesome projects from the evening:

• Krysta Traianovski: Citivate – solving boredom by creating positive spaces for teenagers to hang out for free.
• Pricilla Owusu-Amoah: Same World Same Future – providing workshops and other events for Africa Culture Camp.
• Gena Meldazy: KW BookCycle – building a permanent, interactive public art installation in Uptown Waterloo to borrow, lend and swap books.
• Niket Soni: The Markt – an online platform to connect local food industry businesses directly to consumers.
• The Bright Blue Door: Creative Tank Improvement – buying an industrial air purifier for their artist’s shared studio space collective.
• Shaima E: shecraftz workshops and more – buying equipment & establishing a non-profit for providing workshops and events to families with special needs.

A huge thanks goes out to all of our pitchers and the public that came out to see them! We’d also like to thank The Boathouse for hosting us and providing some much-needed audio support!

As always, if your group wasn’t selected this time around, please feel free to come back and pitch again! Our next pitch night is Tuesday May 26th. If you have a project or idea and want to pitch, please review our Application Guidelines! Deadline for applications is May 15th.

The KW Awesome Foundation is operated and funded by volunteers – If you’d like to help make awesome things happen in Waterloo Region, please consider becoming a trustee!