A chance meeting at a New York City dinner party with one of the core members of the Awesome Foundation led Peekskill businessman Bre Pettis to create the Peekskill chapter of the organization that awards $1,000 grants with no strings attached to creators and their projects.
The Awesome Foundation began in 2009 in Boston to distribute grants for creative ideas that need some cash. At each of the autonomous 68 chapters worldwide, a group of ten trustees pool their money monthly to fund projects.
Pettis came back from that dinner party in January with the notion that the Awesome Foundation could continue something he began in 2020 after the May 25 death of George Floyd.
He started the Peekskill Art Grants for people who are underrepresented in the art community. A grant was given to photographer Ocean Morisset, whose life-size images of protests about Floyd’s death were displayed in the windows of the vacant Workers Compensation Building on N. Division and Main streets.
Pettis talked to a few Peekskill business owners and invited them, along with people he knows, to join the Peekskill chapter of the Awesome Foundation as “trustees.” On the second Tuesday of every month since March, the group gathers at Pettis’s Bantam Tools headquarters on Water Street, and decides who to fund.
“It’s very informal,” said Pettis. “We have some food, look over the applications and make a decision.” He is the “dean” of the group because he organizes it and collects the money and then gives it to the recipients.
The Peekskill chapter of the Awesome Foundation awarded The Underground Railroad Tour and Quilt Presentation the first $1,000 grant for their Juneteenth event. Regeneration Farm and its “Praise in the Garden” event was the recipient in April. The foundation didn’t give an award in May but in June selected two organizations.
Michael Diago, a social worker at Peekskill High School, requested funds to purchase food for the cooking club he’s run for the past five years. Ten to twelve kids a year come to his program, where they learn meaningful skills and become part of a group having fun. They make a wide range of food, from quesabirrias to a clone of a Shake Shack burger. Students usually leave with ingredients to take home and create the meal.
In his application to the Awesome Foundation, DIago said, “At the end of each year, I try to organize a trip to a top-tier New York City restaurant. I am a food writer on the side, and through my contacts I have been able to organize trips two out of the five years, free of charge. That is challenging to pull off consistently, however. School funding to my program was cut at the end of last year. I was able to secure enough private gifts to pay for groceries for this year, but am working toward funding for next year.”
Alicia Simmons, founder of Homeless Remedies, was another beneficiary of the Awesome Foundation for the JOBS program that she runs out of the Field Library. The JOBS Program is a workforce development and life stabilization initiative designed to help participants overcome barriers to employment, education, and long-term self-sufficiency. The program serves individuals facing challenges such as homelessness, justice involvement, housing instability, educational barriers, unemployment, and limited access to economic opportunities.
Danielle Preco of Montrose is an October 2025 graduate of the program where she said she learned more about her interests and strengths in order to better present herself in job interviews. She’s been working in a local pharmacy for the past eight years and is looking to advance to a different position in another company. “I learned about what are some of the questions that would be asked in an interview” during the 8-week JOBS program. “Every Tuesday I went to the sessions.” She encountered Simmons at a fair in Pugsley Park last August and joined the upcoming cohort.
Trustees of the Awesome Foundation chapter in Peekskill include Steve Erenberg of Early Electrics, Mikko Ino of KinoSaito in Verplanck, Wilfredo Morel of Arts10566, Sunny Cover of Peekskill Coffee House, Danielle Silber of Croton-on-Hudson, Ted Haber of Garrison, Curt Seiger, Sezelle Gereau and Amy Larkin. The group is open to adding one more participant as a trustee.
Trustee Amy Larkin is happy for the opportunity to participate in something so rewarding. “The world feels like a big distressing mess. But there are still groups of people doing awesome things that reveal how each of us can make the world better – with courage, creativity, tenacity and labors of love. I’m lucky to be part of the Awesome Peekskill Foundation to provide support to these fabulous folks. Each of the programs we’ve selected — a community garden, a jobs program, and a cooking club for teens — will have ripple effects as they improve the lives of those they serve directly who in turn will move others…making Peekskill, and beyond, awesome.”
