Friday, February 14, 2014

Random Acts of Awesome 01 - Valentine's Day Balloon Scavenger Hunt



With our chapter’s relaunch in April comes a new direction as well. We’ve always helped to enable Awesome in the city, through our micro-grant program as well as helping people make connections through the AF network to help make their projects and ideas a reality.

However, starting in 2014, we’re going to work harder to do more Awesome in the city as well. Our Awesome Calgary Relaxation Station in the community of Mission last year during the aftermath of the flood as part of our contribution to Awesome Day in Canada was a huge success, and we’ve been trying to figure out how to do more of it given the constraints on our resources (all of our grants are entirely self-funded out of our Trustee’s pockets, which doesn’t leave much left over for extras).

So in the lead up to our chapter’s re-launch in April, we’ll be hosting our own Awesome Events and Activities in partnership with some fantastic groups and individuals in the community, many of which are inspired by projects that have received grants by AF chapters in other cities, and we’ll continue to do these sorts of things throughout the year.

The first of which is happening today, and it was inspired by the Valentine’s Day Balloon Scavenger Hunt! project funded by AF-San Francisco, as well as the Poetry+QR Codes project funded by AF-Chicago.

We’re calling it our very first Awesome Calgary Random Act of Awesome.

Today, we’re partnering up with Downtown Calgary to seed a large number of pink balloons across Stephen Avenue Walk (from Olympic Plaza to 3rd Street SW) and Barclay Mall (i.e. 3rd Street SW from 9th Avenue to 2nd Avenue SW) with a special Valentine’s Day message attached. We’re encouraging you to find (or rescue, if the weather is too cold; they should re-inflate once they’re back somewhere warm) these balloons over the lunch hour and to either keep them for yourself or to give them to someone Awesome in your life.

  • What:  Awesome Calgary Presents:  Random Acts of Awesome #01 - Valentine’s Day Balloon Scavenger Hunt in partnership with Downtown Calgary
  • Where:  Stephen Avenue Walk (from Olympic Plaza to 3 St SW) and Barclay Mall (3 St SW from 9 Ave to 2 Ave SW)
  • When:  Friday, February 14, 2014 from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.


We’re also hoping that Calgarians will help us kickstart a Global Wave of Awesome this Valentine’s Day. We’re encouraging people to post a selfie of themselves on Facebook and Twitter along with a Valentine’s Day message of love & justice and to tag the whole thing with #LoveAwesome. Other AF chapters in other cities have promised to monitor the feed and re-tweet or share the more interesting messages in order to inspire people in their city to do the same. We’re hoping to get this thing trending worldwide, and it’d be great if Calgary helped instigate that.

In fact, you don’t even have to participate in our balloon campaign to take part. Just post a positive message to Facebook and Twitter using #LoveAwesome and you’ll have done your part to try to start a rolling wave of Awesomeness around the world!

If you’re in the downtown core during the lunch hour, we hope you’ll help us ensure that each and every one of these balloons finds a good home. Leave no balloon behind!

(PS: There’s free chocolate too)

And for anyone out there who has no one spend this Valentine’s Day with, The Awesome Foundation recently awarded a grant to author Tamara Levitt to fund the creation of a picture book and video that celebrates singledom. “You Are Enough” is a special gift to those who have no one to celebrate this year’s Valentine’s Day with, courtesy of your friends at The Awesome Foundation:


Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us here at Awesome Calgary!

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