PIQUA — A celebration for the Awesome Piqua Foundation will be held on Thursday, May 16 at 7 p.m. at Crooked Handle Brewery at 123 N. Main St. in downtown Piqua to celebrate all the grant recipients and trustees who made it possible to surprise and delight the Piqua community $1,000 at a time. The celebration will also mark the awarding of the final two Awesome Piqua grants, as the group will suspend their activities following the celebration.

Since its inception in 2016, the local organization has given over $50,000 in grants to the Piqua community. Previous donors, trustees, and grant recipients are invited to attend the event.

The sole mission of Awesome Piqua was to fund projects to make a positive impact in Piqua and promote its awesomeness. Awesome Piqua trustees are a diverse group that chose to give back to the community by supporting awesome projects through grants. These grants came out of the pockets of the chapter’s trustees and were given on a no-strings-attached basis to people and groups working on projects that enhanced the quality of life for Piqua’s citizens.

Awesome Piqua was the first Awesome chapter in Ohio. The Awesome Foundation is an international organization with chapters in cities across the world. Some of the projects supported by Awesome Piqua included student-made blankets for veterans in nursing homes; math night at Piqua Central; haircuts for Springcreek Elementary students; and the Locks of Love sculpture at Lock 9 Park. The organization also hosted Piqua’s first food truck rally in 2017.

The last two grants will be awarded to a group who will be cleaning up weathered and dirty headstones at Forest Hill Cemetery and a grant to bring a caricature artist to Mainstreet Piqua’s Taste of the Arts on May 17.

Attendees can purchase food and beverages from the bar at Crooked Handle, and a slideshow showcasing past grant projects and chapter activities will be presented.

The idea to create a chapter of the Awesome Foundation came from the June 2015 I Love Piqua workshop. Previous Piqua City Manager Gary Huff said, “At the workshop, Peter Kageyama, author of the book ‘For the Love of Cities,’ encouraged communities to find ways to surprise and delight their citizens.”