latest bloom tweets...
- Our cakes have made it to the Royal Palace!! Read about it on our blog. 2010-02-07
- Armchair activism - find out how you can make a difference without moving to the third world: http://www.bloomasia.org/category/blog/ 2009-07-30
- Check out Ruth's interview on ABC radio which aired live tonight: http://bit.ly/1hU4r 2009-06-04
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Welcome to the second edition of the Bloom e-newsletter
Bloom’s inaugural graduation
If you’ve read the Bloom blog recently, you’ll know that our first students graduated with flying colours last December. These amazing girls accomplished incredible feats during their exams, which were made all the harder by the fact that most of them had never had a proper education and weren’t literate. Bloom is extraordinarily proud of these girls, who have now become the first employees of Bloom Cafe. Now they’re hard at work perfecting their coffees and displaying their cake art. Here’s one story from the graduation:
After the speeches and certificates had been awarded, everyone got to experience the exquisite desserts the girls had made. They got rave reviews on how delicious the cakes were! In fact one of our student’s family couldn’t believe she had made the cakes, and I was called over to verify that she had, indeed, made the cakes she had pointed to in the display cabinet ALL BY HERSELF! The looks on her family’s faces changed completely to one of awe & respect.
To read more about the graduation, check out our graduation blog post.
Bloom Café opens to the public
The biggest news is that Bloom Café opened in February ! The café is going really well – we have 14 girls now and we are getting between 10-40 people coming every day. We’ve received 7 big cake orders just in the last couple of days, and we’re ahead of our scheduled budget for what we thought we would make in the first month. We don’t have an advertising budget yet, so it’s all been word of mouth – and it seems the WORD IS OUT! We’ve taken cakes to the Australian Ambassador & many of you will have heard the exciting news about Princess Norodom taking our girl’s cakes to the King!!
My favourite story this month happened after we had a group of visitors come through the cafe. One of the girls (who had been in a brothel since she was 6 years old) was just sitting there staring into space. I thought she was upset, and asked if she was ok. She giggled and replied, “I just can’t believe that I have a real job and a real life…”
Bloom Advocate Program launches in March
FINALLY… after a long wait, the Bloom Advocate Program is ready to be launched! Thanks for your patience, especially those who signed up to be part of it months ago – your invitation is coming into your inbox very soon! If you haven’t signed up but would like to come along, it’s not too late!
The launch will take place simultaneously in Brisbane and Sydney on Saturday 27th March 2010. Contact us at hello@bloomasia.org to register.
The Bloom Advocate Program is a peer-to-peer program that enables you to spread the word about Bloom and raise money to continue our work. Be part of it!
Donations made easy!
We’re finally getting a paypal donation button on our website this week, so drop on by and take another look. If you’d like to make a donation, please feel free to do so! We’re currently seeking to increase our advertising budget in Phnom Penh to increase traffic to the Cafe, amongst other needs.
If you’d like to contribute through direct deposit, you’re welcome to do so into BSB: 704-913 Account No: 003165 (name: Gateway Training Centre). Every dollar you give goes directly into continuing the work of Bloom in Cambodia. Thanks for your support!
