The Something Awesome Project

autostraddle:

Students at St. Charles North High School wore “Straight Pride” tshirts to school last week. But it’s fair because that’s just the other side of the argument you start by wearing gay pride tshirts…

The WCSU Gay/Straight Alliance gave us our first donation—proceeds from their 3rd annual Drag Show to The SAP <3. Over-freakin-joyed.

Ask us anything

Okay, I have always been pretty adept with technology and internet things, but I swear this stuff is about to start flying over my head. There are too many THINGGGS! I need to tweet on twitter, talk on tumblr, fumble around on facebook… and and anndd and it all makes me feel like my head is going to explode.

TOO MANY THINGS. 

The beginning.

Jes and I met but a few months ago and were somehow drawn to each other—we chalk it up to divine intervention. Whatever it was, we quickly became friends and started expressing to one another our dreams of doing something bigger/better/cooler/more important/more inspiring/more everything than what we were doing at the time.

These days, whether it is in person, on the phone, on the Facebook chat, via Skype or through ESP, we connect every day, sharing our enthusiastic ideas and plans for The Something Awesome Project. After months of talking and researching and brainstorming and stressing and changing and fixing and amending and the highs and the lows, we became clear about our mission, values and goals: we were going to do something awesome for the gay community. After that, we had to ensure that other people knew about our movement and were able to learn about it and interact with us with and others interested in the work we want to do. Thus, the website was born.

AND THEN THERE WAS LIGHT.

So here we are, two chicks trying to start a movement. We’re learning as we go, learning as we grow, growing as we learn and we couldn’t be more thrilled about the present and future of this project.

We were hoping to submit our idea to the Pepsi Refresh Project this month so that a cool $250K would fall on our laps, propelling our ideas forward, but apparently everyone else in America had that idea, too. The millisecond I got on to the website to send our application, the 1,000 available spots were FILLED! So I drank a 6-pack of Coke.

Kidding, really. We were bummed, but we’ll try again next month. In the mean time, we plan to start orchestrating events for adolescents/teens as well as for adults so that we can a) have some fun and b) make some money to help fund the programs we wish to implement.

That’s where we are today and we hope you’ll join us for the ride to see where tomorrow takes us…

xx Jaime

The Something Awesome Project is a movement dedicated to providing a safe, positive and supportive space for GLBTQ youth and their allies. The Project exists to bring queer and questioning youth together, pair them with positive mentors and offer scholarships for higher education. We strive to empower our youth with the tools to do something awesome every day.

Our vision is, naturally, to create something awesome for GLBTQ adolescents. The three pillars of The Something Awesome Project include:

• Somewhere Awesome Youth Connection provides youth a place where they can hang out, interact and connect with peers based on common traits and interests, form friendships and develop lasting bonds, learn and grow from each other, offer support to one another and enjoy activities together.
• Someone Awesome Youth Mentoring pairs GLBTQ youth with positive and influential GLBTQ role models. 
• The Something Awesome Scholarship Fund provides a monetary award to GLBTQ high school graduates pursuing higher education.

We believe:

• That everyone deserves to be treated with equal levels of respect
• That a tolerant society improves the quality of life for all
• That everyone has the right to be someone awesome
• That everyone should have access to the resources to do something awesome

Visit our website (somethingawesome.org) to learn more about us and to join our dynamic social network of people devoted to being someone awesome and doing something awesome.