Melvin Bao - Gold Award

School: Beaverton Academy of Science and Engineering
Category: Teens (11-15)
Hours: 110.5

Melvin has explored many volunteering opportunities, and enjoys meeting new people, sharing his voice, his culture and his knowledge to the community. Melvin has been volunteering at a local church cooking for the homeless since elementary school. He has fostered more than 30 cats and helped them to find their homes. Additionally, being a passionate singer, Melvin is one of the co-founders of the OCC Choir group, Portland Youth Harmonics. With this group, he has been performing multiple Chinese and English songs throughout his journey at different events, such as the Bing in the New Year at Milwaukie, the Return of the Dragon at China town and Lansu Chinese Garden, and Chinese Festival at Pioneer Square. He also helped to set up, clean up, and host the culture booths at those events to spread Chinese culture to the Portland community. Moreover, as a big fan of aeronautics, he spent two years building a RV-12 plane under the instructions of the senior mentors in the Teenflight program. Since the accomplishment of finishing Plane TF9 in summer 2025, Melvin has come back to the program with the new knowledge he has gained, to be a student mentor, helping and teaching kids to build his second plane, Plane TF10.

Oregon Chinese Coalition is proud to recognize the volunteers who consistently take the time to make a difference in the lives of others. Therefore, it is a great honor to present the Community Volunteer Service Award (CVSA) to Melvin Bao.