Food Peace Project

Nourriture Pour la Paix – En Français

We, at InterChange, have a vision of creating a book of stories and recipes about food and peace. And we would like your help!

The idea of the book came from a casual conversation. Some of us were in Nairobi, Kenya for 5 days of intensive meetings. An excellent local caterer came in to prepare food for us and during one of the meals, the conversation naturally turned to food. Noticing that no matter where we come from in the world, people love to talk about food, one of us suggested we make a recipe book. From there we started talking about different ways food can be used to build peace. And gradually we realized that we were serious about this idea: we wanted to create a book that had stories of how food can be used for peacebuilding, along with recipes, pictures and interesting snippets of information.

The purpose of the book

Food is universal, and every culture has stories of how food is connected to peace and conflict. Because identity and cultural issues play such a big part in violent conflicts today, we believe the symbolic value of food in peacebuilding is enormous. We’re also excited about a project that many people can be part of. Just like the Eastern European folk tale, Stone Soup, when all the villagers contributed food items to create a delicious soup, we believe that creating the book together and sharing it with many people is part of building peace.

What we’re asking for

We want a book that’s fun to read and accessible. We’re looking for stories—not political essays—of ways food can contribute to building peace. We’d also like your recipes for the food in the story—or other good food with a special meaning. Proverbs and poems would be good too, as would interesting facts about food and peace. Pictures and photos would be great! If necessary, we may also be able to come out and record stories someone has to tell (instead of them having to write them). Let others who may be interested know about the book. Please send in submissions as soon as you can.

What will happen once we receive all the material?

Depending on how many stories we get, we may not be able to use them all, though we’ll try and put them all on the website. We’ll edit the contributions where necessary and decide how to group them. This may be by regions, countries, specific conflicts, types of food/dishes (i.e. entree, desert etc), or themes of the stories. We’ll probably add some editorial comments to help organize the book. Once we get everything organized, and/or perhaps when the book is launched, we hope to hold sessions to cook and share some of the food and hold discussions. Our goal is to have the book finished by October 2007. We’re going to have our 2nd InterChange symposium in Rwanda and that would be a perfect opportunity to launch the book.

Some ideas you might consider

Since we’ve started planning the book, people have shared many ideas with us. Here are a few, to get your own imaginations going:

• Two neighbouring tribes in Kenya have never fought each other because their trade in food leads them to co-exist and cooperate.
• People are “Hungry for Peace”
• Different cultural traditions, rituals and stories connectfood and peace
• Food is related to – environment/health/children/education
• Stories about surviving and how people provided food for themselves and for others
• Relationship between the soil and food production
• Certain foods relate to special times of the year and/or to specific rituals (e.g. Aboriginal stories of the strawberry as the ‘heart berry’)
• Connections between generations – also cultural connections in this regard
• Growing, preparing and sharing food builds community
• The story, ‘Stone Soup’- and what the story has inspired
• “Cooks for Peace”- a Toronto group holds shared religious festivals to build relationships between Jews and Arabs
• The Afghan Women’s Catering Cooperative in Toronto uses food to help rebuild their lives after war.
• The ‘Plant a Row’ campaign asks people to plant an extra row of food crops in their garden and donate it to food banks

To get your stories, recipes and pictures to us:

Mary-Jane McKitterick (Toronto): food.peace@interchange4peace.org
Fax: +1-416-926-4749

Mail: InterChange c/o Transformative Learning Centre
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto
252 Bloor St. West, Toronto ON
Canada M5S 1V6

Please write “Food-Peace book” on your submissions