HEALTHNIC – Healthy & ethnic diet for inclusion

“HEALTHNIC, Healthy and ethnic diet for inclusion” was a two-year Erasmus+-funded project to promote healthy eating and a diet based on traditional food from different ethnic cuisines. The main target groups came from different cultural backgrounds, which included refugees, migrants, and long-term unemployed people who would like to develop their cooking skills and interact in a multi-ethnic environment.

The project’s coordinator was Vardakeios School of Ermoupolis (Syros, Greece), and I was responsible for creating and writing the practical guide for the cooking workshops.

The partners developed this idea through their experience working with multinational groups consisting of migrants, refugees, and unemployed people in educational projects. Their findings revealed that the direct and active involvement of people from different cultural backgrounds in activities such as cooking, language, and ICT learning triggers a process of mutual empowerment and sharing of experiences, leading to integration.

The workshops allowed participants to acquire basic skills such as home economics and healthy eating education and reinforced them with specific vocabulary related to food and food preparation methods.

Apart from this, participants acquire ICT skills and create informative/educational digital stories focused on the knowledge gained from exposure to traditional cuisines and healthy eating.

The HEALTHNIC message was, and still is, this.

None of us has the perfect ‘ethnic’ cuisine, and each has much to share, so we can learn from each other and create something new together through acceptance and respect for diversity.

website: healthnic.eu