Here at Bamboo Lounge our mission is to help local people in our community of Luang Namtha in northern Laos, as well as doing all we can to care for our environment.  We currently have a number of initiatives in place to make this happen.

	Our Training Restaurant allows us to give young people a unique opportunity to learn skills to improve their quality of life.  Here we employ local ethnic minority people with no English language or food service experience and teach them all they need to know to work with us. They start off learning about food hygiene and how to properly clean, and progress to food preparation, cooking, and learning to speak English.  Eventually our employees progress to taking customer orders, teaching the newer trainees, and managing the business.
	Our profits support Luang Namtha’s Books in Schools program.  Currently there is only 1 textbook per 3 students.  In time we hope to massively improve the schools’ textbook and reading book levels.
	We provide free water to anyone in town who wants it.  We encourage all travelers to bring in their water bottles and refill them with our purified, clean drinking water to reduce plastic waste.  We hope that this practice will also remind travelers to refill their water bottles where possible elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
	We buy our handwoven cloth napkins/serviettes from Ban Nam Ngaem village. Reusing cloth serviettes also preserves natural resources and cuts back on waste.
	We get our reusable bamboo drinking straws from Ban Sopsim Village, on the banks of the NamTha River.  Did you know that plastic straws are actually the biggest tourism waste product in all of South East Asia?
	We support local farmers and villages by purchasing fresh, locally grown produce for our restaurant. We have just begun to work with a village to grow organic produce for us, an initiative we hope will mean in future we can have a fully organic restaurant.
	We make regular donations of money and food to support the local monks of Luang Namtha, at ‘Tat Luang Namtha’ temple.  Here there are several young monks living a peaceful life up on this mountain overlooking the town.  We encourage tourists to visit this temple as well, the small donation to go inside helps to contribute to the upkeep and maintenance of the temple.
	We use reusable, washable hand cloths is in our bathroom at Bamboo Lounge Restaurant.  This reduces paper waste and reduces cross contamination as each person has their own clean fresh hand towel.We have also been able to source biodegradable takeaway containers, pizza boxes and even biodegradable plastic bags for use in our restaurant.