Building Bridges Toolkit

The Toolkit was designed to collect and share the know-how on voluntary projects involving people seeking or who have recently found refuge, as well as raising awareness on forced migration in general. The collection of guidelines, methods and case studies is non-exhaustive and should simply foster your own inspiration and support you in implementing projects on the topic. The creation of the Toolkit has been driven by the ever bigger need of the international SCI network to exchange best practices on projects in the field. It was coordinated by SCI Switzerland with the support of Útilapu Hungary. Its existence wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the Mercator Foundation Switzerland and the active contribution of the Building Bridges working group and a number of SCI branches.

METHODS AND TOOLS serve to support your work on the topic of refugees and migration with different target groups.

RESTAURANT DAY

Open a pop-up restaurant with refugees! 

Time needed: 1 day

Objectives and aim: Breaking prejudices by cooking and eating together, if wished even fundraising.

Level of difficulty: medium

Category: events

Resources needed: ingredients, kitchen tools, kitchen, venue, marketing materials

Number of participants: team: 3-10, guests: 20-200

Contact: Jekli Ágnes opendoorshungary@gmail.com

    Restaurant Day is a food carnival created by thousands of people organising and visiting one-day restaurants worldwide. Anyone can set up a restaurant, café or a bar for a day. It can happen anywhere: at your home, at the office, on a street corner, in your garden or inner courtyard, at a park, or on the beach – only your imagination is the limit.

    The idea of Open Doors Hungary was to have fun, share new food experiences and enjoy their common living environments together. In the specific case of cooking together with refugees and asylum seekers, Restaurant Day is a good chance to share this part of their culture. It can even be a good chance to raise funds for future projects with refugees and asylum seekers, and a good chance for the public to get familiar with an unfamiliar culture, meet personally with refugees, and taste their delicious food. You can choose any different aim and format, define a date and start preparations!

    Steps:

    1. Find and talk with your chefs, choose the date and the menu! Set together a clear aim of your event!
    2. Register your restaurant on http://www.restaurantday.org/ at least 1 month before the event. Create a Facebook event, and advertise it on different platforms as well! Describe what menu you will offer to your guests, and what are your raised funds for!
    3. On the Restaurant Day you can prepare and decorate your venue with a group of volunteers, other volunteers can help the chefs preparing the food. Prepare places to sit, so people can meet and talk with each other, and get familiar with the topic of refugees and asylum seekers,
    4. You can make your event more popular if you offer other side programs (film screening, music, workshops, games)
    5. Enjoy the food and the company!

    Tips:

    • Kitchen: you can cook in advance and sell it in a different place, or you can cook fresh meals on the venue itself.
    • Venue: better to choose a frequented place, it cannot function originally as a restaurant!
    • Chefs: experienced chefs who can cook for many people is even better
    • Ingredients: Define a budget and ask the chefs for suggestions
    • Have some volunteers, who can inform the guests about the topic of refugees and asylum seekers!
    • Marketing materials: posters, stickers, social media
    • Read carefully the requirements and tips of the Restaurant Day http://www.restaurantday.org/en/info/ 
    • Be transparent with the income, communicate it with the chefs and the guests as well.

    Links:

    CONTRIBUTE!

    You can share your experience, observations, tips and tricks, pictures etc. by uploading for instance a method or a case study to the Building Bridges Toolkit. As this Toolkit is a work in progress to which all involved parties are invited to contribute, we would also be very grateful for your support and contribution in order to inspire others to continue the work towards peace and intercultural understanding.