After months of dreaming and planning and then dreaming some more, today we are preparing to unveil The Awesome Awards - the world’s first living, organic recognition program!
To commemorate our 15th anniversary at Eclipse Awards, we wanted to do something special and unique. We wanted to incorporate our experiences and aspirations into something that might make the world a better place. The results of distilling what we’ve learned over the past 15 years are The Awesome Awards - a celebration of community, generosity, reciprocity and ultimately the human spirit.
We’ve had the unique pleasure of working with hundreds of companies and organizations that value recognition and appreciation, and countless times we’ve witnessed the transformative and energizing effects that recognition can have on people. Essentially what we’ve found is this:
Each of us wants to feel valued and appreciated by our community for our efforts. It doesn’t matter if our community is a company, a non-profit, a team or an association - when we feel valued it engages us and makes us want to contribute more and be our best. Ultimately, this strengthens our community because we are inspired, empowered and energized. Reciprocity is a powerful feedback loop!
So the Awesome Awards are born out of the idea of building stronger communities by celebrating the people that make them awesome. The only way to win an awesome award is by being awesome and there are no other requirements other than that. Tonight we will honour 15 awesome humans that make their communities stronger. What makes this program unique and living, is that each winner becomes responsible for selecting the next awesome person from their community and then bestowing the award upon them, and so on, and so on. In this way the program will take on a life of its own and grow organically.
We’re also launching a website at www.theawesomeawards.org to support the Awesome Awards where people will be able to share their experiences and stories about recognition and nominate new people. As well, each Awesome Award has a unique name, so we’ll be able to follow each award as it journeys from person to person, through community after community.
The Awesome Awards are part game, part experiment, part celebration, but all awesome! We hope that you’ll join us on this journey as it unfolds.