What is your community/contest and what is its purpose here on Steem?

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Our contest @cookwithus is a weekly cooking competition, with two levels of competition and weekly prizes totaling 18 Steem.  Since our inception on 9 March 2018, hosting the @cookwithus contest we built a large community of active and supportive foodies from around the world.  They support each other with encouraging words, upvotes and resteems.  Our purpose on Steemit is to provide a place for foodies from around the world to meet each week and share their culinary knowledge and unique food experiences.

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All the way from South Africa

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from Thailand

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from Australia

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from America

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from Cyprus

Above is just a sample of recipes from all over the world.  

We have built a wonderful community of foodies and we have been blessed to see how much support they give one another.  Our prizes used to be $9 per week and we decided to create a winner's circle so that we could give an opportunity for everyone to win by taking out the best.  In doing that we created a further $9 per week, bringing our prizes up to $18 per week.

Below is a list of our winners over the last 22 weeks - amazing artists each in their own way.

@ground2feet
@loveself
@foodforsoul
@whattheduck
@deimus
@blackberryskunk
@cooknbake
@dianadee
@alansthoughs
@lizelle
@gladysstillwagon
@carolynstahl
@plantstoplanks
@pusteblume
@birdsinparadise
@foodflaneur
@rawadventuress
@saimondonata
@leelektrik
@yesslife
@slowcookingchef
@atmemestable

We have noticed that some of our contestants have been recognised by @curie of late and in this past week we have had 4 out of 5 being acknowledged.  This has really made us happy as this competition brings out amazing talent and as we, the organisers, have all participated in food competitions prior to starting our own, we are very aware of the enormous amount of time and effort that goes into these recipes and posts.  It would be an honour to recognise the contestants further and increase the prize money.

How much support are you seeking per month for the two-month period?

It would be wonderful to have support. In order to cover ourselves for giving out these prizes, we sought help and managed to bring in some support from outside of the competition.  Due to the low price of steem and SBD, our posts do not bring in sufficient monies to cover the prizes in spite of our receiving donations (for which we are extremely grateful).  It was in reaching out for support that someone kindly sent us this post to apply for some sponsorship.

How will this support be used?
@cookwithus will use the support to fund our weekly prizes.
The support will be used to honour contestants with prize money.  We would even like to add yet another tier - something like "super cooks" - once again giving more people the opportunity to stand a chance of winning as we have exceptional talent amongst our competitors.

Approximately how many users participate in your community or contest?

Since inception, we have had 70 participants and many have become regular contestants.
We have 22 winners already in the "winners circle" and every week we have new people joining us in the general section.
In an average week, we have around 15 people participate.   It is also worth noting that we have many spectators that enjoy the competition and some even have favourite contestants.


How will supporting your community or contest help grow the Steem community?

There seems to be a lot of support for cooking and recipes and there are quite a few competitions on Steem.  We wanted our competition to be a little different.  We certainly wanted more care and community.  We are now encouraging our participants to video their recipes which will allow for view tokens as prizes.  We eventually would love to have a video cooking channel as well.
We are delighted with the level of expertise that is being shown. It has been world class! 

We are also wanting to put out a recipe book for the community.  We are aiming to use this on-line recipe book to raise funds and also to raise funds for a charitable cause. 

What is your Discord name and number? (Optional - This may also be sent privately to @randomwanderings#9929 on Discord.)

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Wish I could honour all the contestants that have spent hours on a labour of love producing some really mouth watering recipes.  Sometimes the scores have been so close and now and then we have had ties.

In our hearts and minds they are all WINNERS!!!

And thank you @curie for what you do for the Steemit community.  I really hope we are considered for a sponsorship.  Thank you also for recognising some of our contestants.  Thank you also @randomwanderings