Brief description: The Community Cookbook gathers recipes from residents across generations to create discussions about cultural heritage and connection. It can also be sold to benefit community work.
How to: Ask elders in the community to tell you about traditional dishes they ate as children, foods that bring back memories of places, events and relationships. (Make it an inter-generational project by training and empowering teenagers to collect elders’ stories.) Document them as they describe and prepare a selected dish. Use the photos, oral history, and recipe to craft a cookbook sold to benefit activities in your community. Sponsor a community feast featuring the dishes to launch the cookbook!
Impact statement: Everyone loves to eat! Food brings people together. The Community Cookbook is a great way to create intergenerational dialogue not just about the local community, but about the larger histories that helped to shape it.