05/12/2022
Italy
participants
The main goal was to allow International students to experience a social and cultural international night by having dinner with students from other countries, as well as locals. We wanted to teach them how to cook a typical Italian dish, as we strongly believe that food traditions are a fundamental part of our culture. In fact, cooking dinner in small groups is a perfect way to get to know each other better and foster team building. Moreover, it also helps to create a strong personal relationship with International students, which is what can make them feel welcome in a foreign country.
The second goal was to make them truly understand our food culture which, contrary to popular stereotypes, is not only pizza and pasta, but it rather consists of an astounding amount of unique and peculiar regional dishes.
The activity consisted of many “dinner dates” happening at the same time around the city hosted by Italian volunteers, where the guests were International students who had the chance to experience an authentic Italian meal. Both the International students and the volunteers of ESN Pisa signed up for the activity through a form. Then, the volunteers matched the participants on the basis of different variables, such as food preferences and neighbourhood. Most of the Italian hosts were part of ESN Pisa, but we also opened the participation to volunteers’ friends living in Pisa in order to match as many International students as possible.
The hosts cooked typical Italian dishes for their international guests, who were asked to bring drinks and/or sweets, according to Italian customs. Each host decided what to cook based on their origins, mostly focusing on typical regional dishes, and everybody was involved in the preparation of the meals. The activity sold out very quickly, so we decided to organize it a second time a couple of weeks later, so as to offer to even more people the chance to learn how to cook a true Italian meal.
