Cooking is Home: Intercultural Encounters in Frankfurt

Since July 2015, Über den Tellerrand Frankfurt has been active as the official satellite of the Berlin integration concept. Our goal is to bring refugees and locals together at the kitchen table, instead of side by side. During this exchange, respect, appreciation and friendships grow.

Our goal is to build intercultural friendship networks of refugees and people living at home. In our community, the boundaries between newcomers and local people are blurred. As a connecting element, we cook together. Because food is home and adventure. It creates conversations that do not necessarily require a common language. Integration becomes a fun topic at the kitchen table.

For more than four years, we have been organizing cooking events in which Frankfurters and people who have fled to Frankfurt meet. Based on this, we have created a wide range of different opportunities for encounters in recent years: from our cultural group to our Stammtisch, from hiking together to our discussion format KulturDialoge. Our core competence has been mentoring and tandem programs since 2017, such as our Job Buddy program. Experienced local workers and refugees form tandems and go looking for a job together over a period of five months. In our Volunteer Rockets program, refugees and natives develop their own meeting projects for our community. Volunteering and the social participation of refugees are promoted. In 2019, we also started with Families at one Table. Refugee and local families get to know each other through cooking together.   

In all our offerings, we pursue the approach of "integration at eye level". Therefore, we do not plan meetings for but with our community. Our volunteers work in intercultural teams according to their skills, interests and availability. Mutual curiosity, equal participation and flexible social engagement become possible.  Support our mission to a better We and become part of our community! 

Regular encounters need a current residence that welcomes you. Our home kitchen should be such a place where refugees and natives can meet in a relaxed manner. Since July 2018, we have been proud tenants of rooms in Bockenheim. This enables us to offer regular integration projects and is a reliable point of contact for all volunteers, with and without escape experience.