Climate Action Now (CAN)
CAN Summit 2022 - Food - Chinar Najib, Culture Bridge
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Food session
Stockport CAN Summit 2022
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Okay. Our next speaker is Chinar Najib from Culture Bridge. Chinar is creative director of Culture Bridge, which the Stockport based organisation that leads community arts and culture projects across Greater Manchester. So Chinar was our first Stockport CAN funding recipient for a food growing and cooking project. You want me to stay here in the slides? It's just this one. Yeah. Thank you. Hello, everyone. I'm Chinar from Cultural Bridge. Um, it's been four years now. We are a group of women, multicultural women from mostly from Middle East and from East of Europe. And we have It's a woman led group. We have done many workshops cooking multicultural. We call it multicultural cooking what we're doing. And I'm very glad to be here today and be part of the Stockport for climate action because, uh, I think it's very important for us to be to be involved and to feel belonged and then to for us and for all of us to learn together, uh, to do, a better a better job, especially about about climate action, because for us, it's something very new. And is it my voice? Thank you. So bear with me because I'm not very good looking at the slides and talking. I rather just talk and not look at the slides. So who we are written here. A bit of work of a Cultural Bridge. We are a non profit organisation, and, uh, we are trying to create a cultural bridges and connections between us. Uh, what? I mean, us. We are a group of asylum seeking refugees and migrants in Stockport, and we do, uh, we do want to feel belonged through our activities and through our arts and culture and Cultural Bridge is main leisure and arts and culture with the community. So, so why we need to protect our planet. This is, uh I think it's a big It's a big question for all of us, especially the women in the group, because we've come from a different backgrounds where, uh, like being a refugee, you're always feeling like your life is in danger and you want to survive. That's that's the main thing. But for us to be here, and it's a different it's a different life. And, uh, the whole system is new. Um, and so what we're trying to do as a group is to educate ourselves about climate action and how we can adapt our our like the climate action into our new life so we can educate ourselves, our families and our communities. So zero waste or less waste. Uh, this is one of our our aims, because for us, I think it's very hard because in our culture we learn to cook a lot because we have big families like myself. I have 62 1st cousins, so if, like in a we get together in a in a meal, it will be like at least 100 of us all together. So I am used to cook for 100 people, and I didn't when I was home. But I just find out now I do. I can. But the problem is, uh, we we do throw away half of our food, its culture, and this is something really necessary for us to learn to cook less and to not to waste a lot, and also to reduce plastic and consume less, of course, and learn to recycle all plastic waste. This is something this is also something very new and how to keep the environment clean. This is also very important for us, and I think again it's part of culture. And, uh, we need to work quite hard in this bit all learning together and so basically want to educate ourselves and our families about about the climate action. And I'm very lucky to be here today and then to talk about our experience about our our cooking workshops, our community growing. And Chris was here before we did a couple of sessions at the Woodbank, uh, community health. And it was good to take, actually, not only the refugees, the asylum seeking, the new asylum seeking who at the Britannia Hotel to be there and to help with their well being and mental health and to grow and and cook and be in this beautiful atmosphere with lovely people. And so and we did, um, we went to Platt Field Park in Manchester. Uh, although the funding wasn't much, but then we were very excited. We wanted to go there and do more, so we did. Part of our we used parts of our funding in Stockport and part in Manchester, although it was only for Stockport. But then it was great. So what we did, we did. I think we are about at the moment 20 different nationalities in our women. So during our workshops, we had food from from Malaysia, from China, from Iraq, from Afghanistan from everywhere and every time it was different kinds of vegetables and recipes and ingredients. And, uh, and luckily like because with that's how it is the magic of London and the people who are farming and growing, they are very, um I think kind and generous. This is everywhere in the in the world. So it was. And it is good for us to be to be able to join and, uh, to learn. So, um, what we did it is like every time. For example, in our in our sessions, we'll meet. We'll meet someone from the group who will talk to us and, for example, about recycling and about, uh, how how what kind of food we can cook and we can. We can teach ourselves to reduce our waste and just cook enough for families. Because if I cook myself, although I'm like we are five at home, I always cook for 10 people. I don't know why until today and our culture. We don't think we can keep our food. We always think it's not good to keep so many people. They just throw away the food and then we have to, like, learn. If we don't eat it, put it in the fridge for the next time or what I do. Sometimes I do it again. Part of culture. I shared it with my neighbours. I shared it with the we have our workshop with the asylum seeking people at the ST Peter's. So I just take the food or so um so yes, and then to basically recycle all food in a way to benefit the earth. And so we did lots of gardening with Woodbank community. Chris is here. Today is good. And, uh So, uh, we did learn a lot about gardening. And, uh, for many of us, I think we we learned about gardening at home, but we never had a chance, actually, to be to be in an open space so you can actually do the gardening and see, uh, see, the that the magic behind you know, being there and being free and to feel like home And this is also, you know, the wellbeing bit of it. It was wonderful. So and in Platt Field Park we did. Our group participated in repairing compost. We learned all about compost, about bedding. And we learned about breaking the soil and also how to prepare it for the new season. It was something new, even for me. I grew up in a small town, so it we really all enjoyed that. And it was good. And we learned about creating Willow trees and so and create baskets. And and we all have different kind of like trees. And okay. And also we learned we did talk a lot and it helped our mental and physical health. And so cooking traditional meals we did, show you the picture we did enjoy being with the group and cooking the traditional meals. Yes, thank you very much, any questions.