Friends-International Blog

We are delighted to announce the launch of a new website for the TREE project, a global initiative from Friends which not only will get disadvantaged young people into training and on into employment in a fast-growing international market, but will provide a quality experience for customers also. Standing for Training Restaurants for Employment and [...]

Read the full story

One Thursday back in May, Peuan Mit hosted a party for young people from marginalized communities for the first time… but not the last! The mobile school team, who have worked in these communities for many years went out around 5pm to pick up teenagers and young adults from Nongdouangthong community. A few younger children [...]

Read the full story

Young people from very poor communities in Vientiane Capital and Vientiane Province in Laos have very little opportunities to complete their primary education, and most of them do not progress to secondary school. Vocational training centers are still fairly rare, even in Vientiane, and most of them are completely out of the reach of very [...]

Read the full story

Ms K lived in a rural area of Vientiane Province with her grandmother and young brother until she was 15. Her parents, very poor farmers, left their children and traveled to Vientiane to earn a better living. They found work at the municipal landfill, 36 km south of the city. They lived on the dumpsite, [...]

Read the full story

Fond of Friends’ food? Like to ruminate in Romdeng or masticate in Makphet? Love a snack and a coffee in Cafe Mith Samlanh? Then please help us to a place amongst Asia’s top restaurants by voting for us in this year’s Miele Guide. In 2009-2010 the Miele Guide recognised our training restaurant Makphet in Vientiane, [...]

Read the full story

It was 11 months and 6 days ago when our cookbook team began working on the new Lao cookbook – ‘from Honeybees to Pepperwood’. Tonight (June 2nd) all of that hard work came to fruition as we celebrated the official launch at our Makphet restaurant in Vientiane. Sporadic showers fell over Vientiane throughout the morning [...]

Read the full story

The Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare and Friends-International invite you to join us in celebrating the launch of our new cookbook on Thursday 2nd June, Makphet Restaurant, Vientiane, Laos PDR. If you are in Vientiane, stop by for a fun night of creative Lao cuisine and quirky anecdotes on the making of the book. [...]

Read the full story

Our last week in Laos was extremely busy as we still had to complete the other half of the dishes. Thanks to the support of our amazing team, we finished all of the dishes by Saturday afternoon. We left exhausted but incredibly happy, with wonderful memories, great photos and the knowledge that the fun part [...]

Read the full story

Last Saturday, The Makphet team was invited to take part in a local competition to create dishes made with insects. The event took place in Vientiane and many restaurants competed. Madame Vone and the Makphet students created Honey Bee Larvae Amok with Quail Eggs. The team went along to support them and we were all [...]

Read the full story

Ghislain and have been back in Cambodia for three weeks which seem to have flown by, leaving us with less time than we’d have liked to work on the cookbook. There has so much work piled up for both of us here but we expected that. Working with Friends is no walk in the park, [...]

Read the full story