January 28, 2019
Thai Bloom is proud to maintain an extremely active community philanthropy program, with multiple donations made every year to worthy causes in our home-base community of Beaverton and the Portland Metro Area as a whole. Recently, that community support was extended to an incredibly sensitive and equally important cause – rooting out and eliminating the terrible practice of child trafficking and sexual exploitation in Oregon.
The Beaverton Police Department and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) recently hosted a three-day training course for the department’s sex crimes detective team and dozens of other key Oregon individuals working on the issue. The course focused on a range of topics and programs addressing child sex trafficking cases, including issues associated with the population of exploited children specific to our region. It was very the first training of its kind here in Oregon, and drew police officers, prosecutors, and victim’s advocates from all over the state to participate and learn.
Thai Bloom donated a robust lunch for the more than 70 participants attending the event (valued at over $1,150.00), which featured a range of some of our favorite restaurant dishes, provided entirely free of charge and coordinated with the assistance of Beaverton Police Department Officer Jeremy Shaw (PIO).
“Thai Bloom and all our staff feel that we don’t just provide a warm and friendly place for great food, we also serve an active, positive role as a community gathering point that helps bring families and the community together,” said Walter Bowers, Thai Bloom co-founder and GM. “With that in mind, we felt that contributing to the effort to save vulnerable kids, and helping address an issue that is best combatted through community awareness and concern, was particularly important and appropriate.”
The donation featured a range of some of Thai Bloom’s favorite restaurant dishes, including Drunken Noodles Chicken, Spicy Chicken Basil, Yellow Curry Chicken, and Pineapple Fried Rice.
Over the past year, Thai Bloom has also donated to a total of 18 other worthy local organizations and causes, providing them support as part of our strong commitment to active community involvement and ongoing charitable contributions.
These 2018/19 donations included recent support of Beaverton High School Jam the Dam Week of Wishes event, Oregon Food Bank and Hunger-Free Oregon, the Raphael House and Portland Homeless Family Solutions, SMART, the NW Dance Project, and Guide Dogs for the Blind.
Thai Bloom is proud to support these and other local non-profits and charities, and will continue a strong program of community philanthropy in 2019 and beyond.