We’re launching our first Thai cooking class in Bangkok and you’re invited!
If you’re looking for things to do in Bangkok, you can finally join a Courageous Kitchen cooking class with us! We’re taking our experiences doing community outreach, feeding and educating people, into hosting people looking for unique cultural experiences in Bangkok.
We hosted our first official class this week and everything went better than expected. Now we can confidently extend our invite to other friends, supporters, and even tourists visiting Bangkok. Cooking classes are already a popular activity for tourists visiting Thailand to do when they’re not battling the sun visiting famous temples or passed out at a Thai massage. We hope to tap into the enthusiasm and curiosity people have about Thai food, while having some fun, and sharing the story of Courageous Kitchen.
We’ll be keeping the classes very small and pumping the funds generated by bookings back into our work with children in need. As a matter of fact, you will even have a chance to learn some of our students favorite recipes!
Here’s what you’d do in a typical cooking class:
– Visit a local fresh market and be introduced to unique Thai ingredients
– Browse different street food stalls and a stop for coffee
– Hear from our team and volunteers about Courageous Kitchen
– Be introduced to locally grown and organic Thai ingredients we use frequently
– Cook up a storm making up to three of your favorite Thai dishes (requests welcome)
– Enjoy eating your pad thai and other dishes together, with a traditional Thai dessert
We’re excited to invite you to join us and to kindly ask that you would help spread the word about this latest initiative. If you or friends are visiting Thailand you can join us in Bangkok, meet some of our volunteers, and support our project while having fun and getting fed!
This December Courageous Kitchen celebrates a year as an official charity! With such a turbulent year behind us, we’re more excited than ever to be doing fulfilling, important work in communities so often overlooked. With that said we want to tell you about our latest partnership with two great organization based in Bangkok.
In recent months we have been connected with Share Soap, an organization collecting unused toiletries, and Support the Girls, another group collecting donations of bras and feminine products. That means this year the primary thing under the Courageous Kitchen Christmas tree is soap, toothpaste, sanitary pads, and bras!
A photo posted by The Courageous Kitchen (@courageouskitchen) on
If you’re thinking, “Who the heck wants soap for Christmas?!” then thankfully you’re like most of us who don’t have to decide between feeding our families and personal hygiene. While most anyone would expect to see some toys under the tree, we’re instead thankful for our new found partner organizations who are helping us spread dignity and self confidence to the vulnerable women we work with of all ages.
We’ll be giving out the remaining donations this coming weekend and having our year end Christmas Eve class. The occasion calls for a big meal for our students and their families, being thankful for the year that’s past, and looking forward anticipating more great things in 2017. Thank you for your support this past year and if you’re a newcomer to our project, please get in contact about helping a family or even reserving a seat in our new cooking class!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!
PS – US Citizens don’t forget to claim your donations on your taxes in the coming year! If you’ve given $250 or more, let us know and we’ll happily provide a donor acknowledgement form for you to submit along with your returns.
This month we’re hosting some events in Bangkok to encourage more of our supporters to consider becoming a sponsor to families Courageous Kitchen supports each month. These are simply families struggling in the communities we serve. Often they have students participating in our pre-school or our Saturday classes for teens.
The educational support we provide free, creates an environment where we can befriend families and find out more about them. For instance, inquiring about a missing student could lead us to find they have been hospitalized or cannot participate in classes because they’re caring for a sick parent. In these instances, we’re able to intervene with emergency support for medical, housing, and food needs. This is only possible because of our recurring donors who give $50 or less each month, most of them giving around $10.
Our larger donors allow us to reach out to a family in need and transform their circumstance by giving them some stability. For example, we recently had a donor wanting to help with medical needs. Their desire to help was timely because one of our teen girls had two younger siblings who had been in and out of the hospital. The worried parents had taken the children to the hospital so often, they owed medical bills that would take them months and month to pay back. Worse than the stack of medical bills was that the children’s health had also not been improving.
Today they are incredibly thankful to their sponsor. In a short amount of time they were able to use the extra sponsorship money to get the sick siblings to a better hospital, begin paying their old debts, and not have to worry about pulling their eldest daughter from classes simply because they could not afford both the medical bills and her tuition.
With your help we can give this piece of mind to more struggling families by bolstering their ability to put food on the table, live in safe housing, and send their children to school. That’s what we’re really all about! Please keep us in mind this holiday and consider sponsoring a family. If you have any questions about the donation process, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Thank you and wishing a belated happy Thanksgiving to all of our supporters!
The great photos in the update are the work of volunteer photographer Kelly Tobias.
Holiday giving season is upon us and we’ve just updated our website with Stripe integration to make it easier to take donations! This means whether you’re doing a one time meal sponsorship or interested in setting up a recurring donation to help a family in 2017, it’s easier and fee free for a limited time!
The Credit Card Option & Incremental Giving
A few of you have written to us about problems with Paypal accounts, or trouble donating from certain places around the world. We’re happy to report these issues should mostly be sorted out and as a registered charity we’re approved for the Stripe Nonprofit program. This means the first $15,000 we raise online before next November, will not be charged any fees! In the future we’ll still be eligible for a discount on fees, but keep in mind this deal is exclusively for Courageous Kitchen in 2017!
When you make a donation on our website the default option should be set to credit card. This processing option is Stripe and you can enter your information securely by following the pop down menus. Paypal lovers don’t fret the option is still available for those who prefer this method and we’ve added a page to explain other donation options too.
Online shoppers can give small amounts incrementally, but these donations add up!
Finally online shoppers don’t forget you can search for “Courageous Kitchen” in the nonprofit programs on your favorite sites such as Amazon and Ebay. Select us are your charity of choice and when you check out a small percentage of your payment will go towards our efforts creating leaders!
2017 Giving Campaigns
For the holiday and on into 2017 you will see us promoting two giving campaigns. The first is to get our classes funded for the full year next year, with a fundraising goal of $10,000. This is money to cover our shopping expenses for each meal and additional would help us to get more advanced equipment (we are currently only cooking on gas woks) and much needed safety equipment for our fast action kitchen (first aid kids, new fire extinguishers, etc…). This part of the project is the heart of our story and we’ve made the options for giving flexible with a $1 donation to give a plate of food to a student, up to sponsoring an entire cooking class for $100 (you can also choose a custom amount to donate).
The second mission for 2017 is to get as many families sponsored as possible in our community. As we build stronger families, we also want to strengthen the family unit our students go back to after class. Your sponsorship could enable a family to find safer housing, afford the children in the family a chance to see the doctor, and purchase food and medication. These recurring donations are also better for small organizations like ours, as they allow us to forecast giving into the future and respond quickly to emergency needs.
Thank you for your support and sticking with us as we’ve grown over the past year, we’re confident great things are on the horizon in 2017!
On October 9th, top chefs from Bangkok came together to raise money for the Courageous Kitchen at the W Hotel’s House on Sathorn. The event called Courageous Bangkok brought together the chefs in a benefit for Courageous Kitchen, which saw each restaurant provide special drinks and food. The event included the following restaurants:
The Oyster Bar
Quince
Bunker
The House on Sathorn
Bolan
Little Beast
Crab & Claw
Lobster & Oyster
Le Du
Sloane’s
Luca Cesarini
EAT ME
Appia
Lavanille
Blair Mathieson
Sensi
The nearly 130 year old house and former Russian embassy was a beautiful venue, the band “The Drivers” were rocking, and all the hard work that went into making this an awesome event from our hosts, sponsors, and participating restaurants was humbling. The event was part of larger initiative coming to Bangkok that aims encourage responsible and sustainable lifestyles among local consumers, starting with sustainable food. In addition to the restaurants on hand, there were representatives from Big Trees encouraging people to make pledges not to contribute to pollution, and Scholars of Sustenance explaining their plans to promote composting and food rescue throughout the city.
Our Courageous Kitchen students also stepped up by supporting the chefs and kitchen teams preparing and serving food. The were responsible for both simple tasks such a distributing utensils, and more complex tasks such as plating and garnishing dishes prepared for guests. Funds raised at the event will be used to continue to improve our cooking space, safety equipment, and to provide all the needed supplies on into 2017. Thank you to everyone who participated in any way during the event and we hope there will be many more happenings to share with you in the future!
Photos by volunteer photographer Kelly Tobias. For more photos from the event, be sure to visit the Courageous Kitchen Facebook Page.
We’re excited to announce the latest Courageous Kitchen documentary called Urban Refugee: Bangkok. The 12 minute film debuted recently on youtube and we hope you’ll watch below and share with friends:
The film was directed and shot by Tara Milutis a talented American filmmaker. She helps explain the plight of urban refugees and asylum seekers in Bangkok, in their own words. Each of the narratives is assisted by members of the community who have been actively working to aid this vulnerable group of people. The video also introduces views to the work of the Courageous Kitchen, especially in the lives of children who don’t have typical access to education, live in broken homes, and who are not eating enough nutritious food. The goal of the film is to inspire, educate, and challenge people to get involved. Please do take the time to leave a comment and let us know what you think!
Common Questions About the Video:
I had no idea this was happening, how can I help?
You can help further the mission by donating to our project, especially by creating a recurring donation. When you click the donate button there are options where you can choose to donate, no matter how large or small the gift. Beyond giving financially, following along on our facebook page, while sharing our activities with friends is a contribution we don’t take for granted.
Finally for people who will be traveling to Thailand and hoping to get involved please be aware most of our volunteer opportunities go to people who are in the country long term. Although there are not many short term opportunities, do make sure you follow our facebook page for events and other happenings where you may participate.
Is this a Christian ministry?
Courageous Kitchen is a non religious, non political public charity. The classification of our organization means we neither discriminate among the people we help, nor the volunteers who help us, based on religious or political affiliation.
While we do enjoy good relationships with some churches and faith based organizations, we do not receive any regular financial contributions from these institutions.
Is it possible to donate clothes?
No, we are not currently accepting any clothing donations. We do encourage people interested in giving their clothes to find another local charity who can accept these in-kind gifts. If you are in Thailand, one such organization is called Second Chance Bangkok. For other locations around the world, please check with the local refugee organizations in your community.
