Announcement: Life Writing and Social Inclusion: or, Three Pots, a Lid and a Wedding

Life Writing and Social Inclusion. Or, Three Pots, a Lid and a Wedding

Life Writing from Below in Europe (EJLW 7, 2018) explored ways in which, historically, social groups previously excluded from full participation in their societies narrated their lives as a way of asserting dignity and the right to be included.  Such struggles continue today.  One such effort, Healthnic, a collaborative European project funded within the EU's Erasmus framework, embeds life narration as part of workshops involving the exchange of culinary, dietary, and IT skills.

Creating digital stories on Healthnic Diet project

Did you know that croissants represent the crescent on the Turkish flag but also can be the everyday meal for people who fled from their countries? What happens when three pots and a lid meet again after many years? These and other real or fantastic stories were  adapted in digital storytelling videos as a result of the local  Healthnic Diet workshops that were conducted by organisations from Greece, Italy, Ireland, Poland and the UK.

Healthnic: Healthy and ethnic diet for inclusion is a 2-year Erasmus+ project of Adult Education that started in October 2017 and promotes healthy eating based on traditional food from different ethnic cuisines of multinational groups consisting of immigrants, refugees and local unemployed people. The workshops enable participants to acquire basic skills such as home economics and healthy eating education, supported by food and nutrition glossaries and food preparation methods. In addition, participants gain ICT skills and create information/educational digital stories focused on the knowledge gained of both food culture, traditions and healthy eating.  Professionals working with these target groups can visit healthnic.eu, get information about the project and can also use the educational resources: the Practical Guide and the Toolkit, that were created by the staff of the partner organisations in order to help them organise a Healthnic workshop on their own.

Evgenia Kollia (Vardakeios School, Syros, Greece)

A fuller account of the Healthnic project will appear in EJLW 2020, together with another project which combines writing, audio-visual and public speaking skills to use life stories as a challenge to social exclusion.