By Rabea Haß

KITCHEN ON THE RUN promotes personal exchange between refugees from around the world and local people in Europe. In concrete terms, we will travel with a mobile kitchen container through five European countries (Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden) between March and August 2016 and will remain at each location for four weeks. Each day, we will provide 15 to 20 refugees and local people with the space and opportunity to cook and eat together and to exchange experiences in a cosy environment. The aim is to give the refugees in particular the chance to act as hosts. Our project will create mutual acceptance by way of personal encounters and points of contact. We literally mean it when we say: "Mi casa es tu casa!"

In order to share our journey also with people beyond the stations of our trip, we will accompany the project with a blog and will subsequently publish recipes and stories in a cooking book.

The idea behind the project

We intend to bring together people at one table by using the low-threshold yet at the same time very communicatory medium of cooking. The idea is to get refugees and local people to talk to each other by way of joint cooking events, to give them an opportunity to get to know each other personally and to thus reduce prejudices. En passant, our guests will experience how other cultures can contribute to ours (not only) in a culinary manner. We open up a new way of perceiving refugees: they are an asset contributing to our societies!

Jule Schröder and Rabea Haß, two passionate Europeans, conceived the idea, because during study and work trips and other travel to numerous countries in Europe they had repeatedly experienced that the best discussions and nicest encounters tend to happen at the kitchen table. They now want to contribute their experience and skills from their combined twelve years of professional experience to blend their vision of peaceful co-existence in Europe with their passion for good food and kitchen table discussions in the KITCHEN ON THE RUN project.

They chose a freight container as the site for encounters, because it conveys drastic symbolism: whereas goods are being shipped across all borders every day, many people are barred from being able to freely and legally move across borders. At the same time, the kitchen remains mobile in the container and can be transported to remote locations in Europe. It provides sufficient space and protection to create a protected and cosy environment and can be used in a flexible manner. The container will travel through several European countries from the Italian Mediterranean all the way to Sweden, symbolically retracing a frequent odyssey experienced by refugees, to raise awareness for the fact that we as Europeans have a responsibility towards these refugees – a joint responsibility!

On site, the project will closely co-operate with stakeholders from the spheres of municipal administration and civil society and will establish in advance a sustainable local network. This will ensure the sustainability of the project and will contribute to leaving behind an active community once the container continues on its journey.

This is precisely where our questions come in:

Who knows stakeholders or feels like supporting us themselves during our journey? We are planning to stop in the following regions:

March/April 2016: Southern Italy (Campania, Calabria, Apulia)

April/May 2016: Southern France (along the Mediterranean coast)

May/June 2016: Germany (Ruhr region)

June/July 2016: the Netherlands

July/August 2016: Southern Sweden

We are specifically looking for rural areas or small towns where many refugees live. We hope to win over for our project organisations on site (from the spheres of civil society and municipal administration), who will publicise our project in the respective sites, will enable access to refugees and who will support us with a helping hand during our four-week sojourn.

Please find out more about our project on kitchenontherun.org/

KITCHEN ON THE RUN has recently been awarded funding from the idea competition Advocate Europe.