The Red Cross made funding available to initiatives that were designed to bring refugee communities together with those in their ‘host’ communities.  In response, we conceived of an event we called ‘The Taste of Home’. We issued an open invitation to anyone local who was willing to share their taste of home with the wider community.

 

Led by a group of local people, including an 82-year-old war widow with very ‘traditional’ views, alongside more recent arrivals, including a young man who had spent 8 years trying to get to the UK from Somalia and others with similar stories to tell. In the morning, 8 groups of cooks from 8 different ethnic and cultural origins shared recipes in a large teaching kitchen and, at the same time, shared their stories of home. They then, together now as one group, welcomed a further 60 people to come and share their food and their stories.

 

To facilitate this, we had identified translators from amongst the groups and arranged seating to encourage people to sit with those they did not know. The room was also decorated to feel like home, with flowers and paintings, and maps of the world, identifying where participants had come from. People were further invited to draw on the paper table cloths,  helping them to connect across barriers of language, culture and custom.