Monday 6 October 2025 16:00 - 18:30
Help us fight food waste - and enjoy a lovely meal!
- What: Mututal AID Kitchen - cooking and eating rescued food together
- When: Monday 6 October, 16:00 - 21:00
- Where: Samenwerkende Democratische Organisaties (SDO), Hoog en Droog 25, Enschede (link to location on Google Maps)
- Registration: No registration needed
According to the WWF (2021) (PDF), 40% of the food we produce worldwide is wasted. This has a huge impact on people and planet. At the Mutual AID kitchen, we want to show that food waste can be reduced!
The Mutual Aid Kitchen Enschede is a revolutionary sociocultural project in the heart of Enschede informed by the anarchist philosophy of direct action. The project aims to provide healthy food for those who cannot afford it, to combat loneliness, to prevent food waste, and to build a counter-hegemonic movement in Enschede. We collaborate with the Voedselbank who donates food and the Collaborating Democratic Organizations from Turkey who hosts us in their community centre. The food donated by Voedelsbank would be thrown away if we were not to make use of it. Their donations enable us in turn to provide healthy vegan food for donations.
This means that no one has to pay for the food they eat in the mutual aid kitchen. Instead, we indicate our own costs for the day (usually below 1€ per meal) and recommend this as an amount for donations. The community centre is a large space in which people from all socioeconomic statuses, age groups, ethnicities, genders, and sexual orientations can come together. Such spaces are otherwise barely existent in Enschede, as people with low incomes are systematically excluded from the so-called public space by the need to pay. Ageism, racism, sexism, transphobia, and other bigotries make many spaces socially inaccessible for minority groups in safe manner. At the same time, more than 50% of Enschede’s inhabitants suffer from loneliness or severe loneliness.
Therefore, we provide a safer space in which everyone is welcome and can engage in respectful social contact. However, our project is no charity work, as we have an explicit political intent. We aim to actualize the free world we want to life in. This means that we organize without hierarchies in decision-making power and take the first step in realizing a better world for all by offering a space in which everyone can experience a different way of being together. On top of all of this, we aim to give a podium to local progressive political movements to talk about their concerns and projects and to engage in open dialogue together. This way, we want to build solidarity between local progressive movements to grow into a strong, united counter-hegemonic movement. Do you want to be part of this initiative? Then take your chance and take part in the mutual aid kitchen during the Sustainability Week.
Please Note:
- cooking from 16:30 -18:30
- Eating from 18:30 -19:30
- Presentation and open debate on degrowth 19:45 -21:00
Come and join us, have a free and lovely dinner - we hope to see you there!
Sustainability Week
This event is part of Sustainability Week 2025: an annual week filled with fun and educational events, designed to inspire, and engage participants to join the sustainability movement. You can find all Sustainability Week events on the special website.
