And the Results

The results are in, our judges have spoken, and TBG is ready to wrap up. The winner is...

Megan!

In the words of guest judge Peter DeWolf, "Absolutely epic. So impressive. Megan's knowledge and passion and caring... I just want to give her a hug now. Great idea. A Big Give that will keep on giving."


You can see the whole project (start reading at the bottom) complete with vlogs and photos. But I do suggest you end up reading The Big Give That Keeps On Giving. Meg will share with you her passions and inspiration. In the end, that's what this is all about.


She started blogging as part of this contest initiative, so please do check it out!

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We also have a gorgeous runner-up. Jami sent a package to a friend serving in Afghanistan and you can see her dance moves (the association is a little blurry, but wonderful none-the-less). Jami's Trashcan is the blog, and excellent on so many other levels, Highly recommended!

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I would like to especially thank all our readers. You've made the contest worthwhile, and I hope we've inspired us. Please feel free to e-mail us at goaheadmaketheirday@gmail.com with any stories. We hope to occasionally have more quality content on the blog, so I hope you continue to follow.


And to our contributors, you've been amazing. Inspiring myself and everyone else. Not to mention the team that helped promote, build the site, and spread the word. You are all incredibly awesome. Thank-you.

Wow. July sure has gone fast. The Big Give is almost done for 2010. In a couple of days we'll be posting all of the submissions from our Givers, and then our judges will go to work on the challenging task of choosing a winner.

Don't forget to visit each of our entrants blogs (you can find a full list here) to check out what they've been up to with their $20, and don't forget to always give with a smile on your face.

In the meantime, we asked the amazing Wade Johnston to answer Three Questions on video. Wade is our music guru, and the lucky rabbit who wins TBG will get the chance to chat with him in IM about all things related to making music on the internet.

xo

Mel.

Giver updates and Three Questions with Una LaMarche

I have two very exciting things to announce today.

Three weeks in, we've received our first progress report from one of our Givers. Megan posted the first part of her Give, and you can read it over here. Remember to check out The Givers page to meet all eleven entrants in TBG, and visit their blogs to check on their progress.

Secondly, the wonderful Una LaMarche has answered Three Questions for us. Una blogs at The Sassy Curmudgeon and is our blogging guru. For more of what that means, check out the Prize Pack section of this blog.



Remember to check out TBG's Youtube channel and subscribe/like/comment as if you mean it. www.youtube.com/goaheadmaketheirday

TBG on Youtube

Phew. It's been a crazy couple of days with processing the registrations for TBG, but I'm excited to announce that we have eleven Givers, and you can follow their progress right here, with regular updates.

I'm also excited to announce that TBG is on Youtube. The channel is something we'd been planning since the launch of TBG, and after several false starts, multiple computer glitches and a crashed laptop in Ireland, we're finally good to go with Three Questions from the lovely Nel from Finding Rabbit. Check out her contribution to the TBG prize pack over here, visit Nel's blog here and watch this little clip here:



If you love us, head over to our Youtube Channel, http://www.youtube.com/goaheadmaketheirday, and follow, subscribe, like, poke or whatever it is you do on Youtube.

Compliments also count

My city is full of "windshield cleaners", you know, those guys (or girls but those are rare) that clean your car's windshield when the traffic light is red...OK, so some of you have never heard of them? It's OK, maybe it's a third world thing, I am not sure.

Anyway, we live about 10 kms away from the downtown area. It doesn't seem that bad but believe me, it's a lot. Of course there are a lot of traffic lights on the way, and that means "windshield cleaners"...so basically they wipe your windshield and they get a tip. The problem is we live so far away that our windshield gets cleaned at least 4 times until we reach our destination. My mum always says she ends up spending more money tipping these boys than on parking, however, she always gives them some money.

Last Sunday, we went to the movies to see "Prince of Persia" and there was a windshield cleaner at the mall's traffic light. Mum didn't have any change but I did, so when he was done I handed him the money and told him : "I'm tipping you only because you have dreadlocks" (which I find very cool). He looked very surprised and his face lit, while flashing a great smile, the lights turned green and he said "Yay for dreadlocks!" and so we left.

I know it is a very silly story, but my point is that you don't need much to make someone happy, to make someone smile. It goes beyond tipping someone who is trying to make a living (I often tell mum that, "you know, they could be stealing but they're not, they're working"), sometimes being honest and complimenting someone help us make their day too.

My Own Big Give: Kris, Part 3

So, here's the part where it all plays out.  And, know what?  It was fun!

Step one: Shopping.
This part was kinda boring.  You know I already that I had flour.  So my budget looked (roughly) like this.
Gallon milk : $4.50
Yeast:            $5.00
Margarine:  $4.50
Now, I realize this doesn't equate quite my $20 budget, but it eases the guilt I was feeling for using all sorts of ingredients that I had on hand.  I also bought a bunch of bags, but they didn't end up fitting a full loaf, so I had to scrimp some up.

Step two: Baking.
Here I managed to be efficient and skilled.  Every batch I made met with success.  Hopefully there wasn't a batch with ten-fold salt or something.  I'd never know about it.  Unfortunately, I had to bake in sets of two since I had only two pans.  And since bread is fairly time consuming this was a long process.  This is a picture of some of my healthy bread set out to cool.  Check Pt. 2 if you're interested in the recipe.

Step three: Delivery.
Now this was the fun part!  I've always enjoyed leaving secret surprises for people.  I seriously met some small adrenaline sneaking through people's backyards and popping loaves of bread on their porch railings.  I included brief handwritten notes with their names (for the ones I knew), so they wouldn't be creeped out, and a bit of nutritional info.  Wouldn't want somebody with a severe dairy allergy cutting into my fresh loaves...

I was discovered on occasion.  It would be hard not to be.  But just ripped the note off, stuffed in in my pocket and said, "Here.  My recipe makes two and I can't eat both!"

And, here's what I think.  It's true!  I can't eat two loaves.  But I love homemade bread.  So in the future that extra loaf will be finding it's way onto porches and door stoops around town.

Where's the (internet) love

Maybe it's all the Big Giving love that's been flying around, but the internet just seems like a brighter place of late. It seems that everywhere I turn, there's someone else who wants to make someone's day and is using the interweb to do it. Here are a couple that I've come across. Remember, if you read and don't click, you're doing it wrong.

Tweet love to haters - I discovered it while listening to Triple J last week. Triple J morning radio presenter, Tom Ballard is both the youngest ever host of Triple J Weekday Breakfast, and openly gay; a sure-fire recipe for some serious online hate. And that's why Tom's started to #tweetlovetohaters. When the hate starts flying, Tom will send out a tweet like this one to his 7000+ followers...

... with the aim being to fight hate with love. Oh and guess what? It works, even to the extent where Tom's received apologies from haters who have been showered with love by the Twitter-verse.

Love Bombs Any blogger worth his customised layout will tell you that nothing has the power to brighten our day like logging in to Blogger (or Wordpress. whatever) to find that someone has left us a shiny comment on our latest post. The clever rabbits at ItStartsWith.Us were well aware of this, and thats why they started Drop a Love Bomb. Each week they put the call out to drop a love bomb on someone in the form of hundreds of comments to someone who could use the encouragement. Uh, hello! Where do I sign up?

I mean sign up to give comments. Sheesh.

Dares for Good -

Here's one for all you bloggers who just love to tag each other in your blog posts. TBG contributor and all round darling, Dori from Dori the Giant has started her own viral blogging campaign, Dares for Good. Dori says that she wanted to create tags for things that make a difference, and she's succeeded with dares such as donating to the Haiti appeal and turning off unused lights to help the environment.

We'll be seeing some serious action from our Givers in the coming weeks, but in the meantime remember, The Big Give is not a spectator sport, so get out there and do something!