Cooking loneliness away

Cooking loneliness away - what could that actually mean? Today we volunteered at Resto van Harte which roughly translates to Restuarant from the Heart, in the East side of Amsterdam. Resto van Harte is an organization that aims to lessen the experience of loneliness in communities by bringing local communities together around a dinner table. They believe that each person, no matter who, deserves a spot at the table and they ensure making it accessible to all, by only asking 5 Euros for a three-course meal. They believe that cooking and eating together as a community is a recipe for a better community.  We joined them to learn more from the organization but also about the ways in which we could take some of these ideas and inform our own understandings of community building and improvements. Here is a little snapshot by Jaeden and her experiences, who is on the program: 

"Today was super cool, I really enjoyed getting to help in the kitchen. Not only was I getting to help with a cool part of the community, but I am also becoming a better cook and getting to know people! I got to learn about managing money in a way to feed around 120 people by preparing food and seeing how little was being spent on each person. It was so awesome to get to meet everyone that was helping work and volunteer in the kitchen and also meet all of the nice people who were eating there tonight. I got to help cook and set up the eating areas, whenever the guests arrived and all of the food was prepared, I helped serve the people and then whenever everybody was done eating we all helped to clean up the space. This was such a cool experience! Lekker!"

When we asked an older woman who frequently volunteers and is from the community herself about what Resto van Harte means to her, she said it means 'Soulfood!'. What stood out from this was that she mentioned that food and music bring people together, no matter who they are. Talking about music - we were also lucky enough to witness the amazing voice of our very own Leili on the program. This was Leili's international debut (if you will) and she definitely got the crowd in the right mood to have an amazing evening. There are so many lessons we can take away from tonight's event, but one of the most striking was the notion that food can bring people together!