The Portland Business Forum is a group of ten small business owners who meet on a weekly basis to exchange information on running a business, and to help promote each other’s businesses. In the past 15 years, this small group of business owners has given out more than $25,000 in scholarships to students that we believe show the potential to be a small business owner. In doing so, our goal for ourselves is to show how small business owners, through small efforts, can make a difference.
This year’s recipient for Lake Oswego High School is Beatrice Roman. Beatrice worked in Peru last summer organizing small group therapeutic activities for sex trafficking victims, to allow them to be able to function more effectively in their lives going forward. The summer before that Beatrice was in Ecuador participating in the organization of a public quesaria, or cheese making facility, to allow the community to become more self-sufficient. She has also spend a significant amount of time in the past two years creating awareness about sex trafficking and networking with local organizations, both profit and non-profit.
This is the very definition of a small business owner: someone who organizes small groups into meeting a business goal in a way that functions effectively within a larger community. She organized small groups of people who had been affected by sex trafficking or the need for a public facility, to meet their business goal, both economic and noneconomic, to function within a larger community.
Whether Beatrice becomes a small business owner as a therapist, or becomes the organizer of a small group that functions as a small business, Beatrice is well on her way to showing how small business owners, through small efforts, can make a difference.
