Pittsburgh is "Awesome": A $1000 Grant, Skydiving, and Supporting Haitian Families

This is quite the story of three local organizations supporting, networking, and helping each other out. It starts with Awesome Pittsburgh, a chapter of the Awesome Foundation which helps grant people, groups, or organizations catch-free money to help them put their brilliant ideas into action. Every month a new winner is announced. Awesome Pittsburgh wants “to hear your best ideas for making the Pittsburgh region stand out in the global economy, for connecting our communities, for celebrating art or technology, for making the community a better place to live, work, and play, or for simply surprising and delighting your fellow Pittsburghers.”

Applications for, well, awesome ideas can be completed online. The deadline for each application is the 1st of every month.

Did we mention that we give away $1000 every month to people w/ awesome ideas? Make June your month. Apply by 6/1 at awesomepgh.com/how-to-apply/

— Awesome Pittsburgh (@AwesomePittsbgh) May 29, 2013

More information about Awesome Pittsburgh can be found on their website, Facebook, and Twitter pages.

Through Awesome Pittsburgh, Michelle Thom launched “60 Seconds of Pure Freedom,” which gives people the chance to sky dive and experience what Michelle calls “the epitome of freedom” who may not have had the opportunity otherwise. “60 Seconds of Pure Freedom” looks for deserving candidates of the community to be nominated and given the award of a tandem skydive.

Submit your nominations for the 60 Seconds of Pure Freedom Award at pure.freedom@rocketmail.com (the deadline for June is May 31).

Now Haitian Families First enters the picture. Haitian Families First is a non-profit aimed at fighting poverty by keeping Haitian families together through the provision of “holistic support to all members of the family, in ways that lead them toward sustainability”. The company was started by two Pittsburgh-native sisters, Jamie and Ali McMutrie.

As a fundraising effort for HFF, Jamie and Ali launched an Indiegogo campaign to help continue to raise money for families in Haiti. Ali has a tremendous fear of heights, but she planned to “conquer her fear for GOOD” while raising money and awareness for HFF and their cause and happened to perform the “Dive to Thrive” jump through 60 Seconds of Pure Freedom.

How awesome (pun INTENDED) that all of these local organizations came together and helped one another out for great, positive causes.