Sustainable Goal No 10
Reduced Inequalities
Introduction
When we were instructed by our teacher Miss Betty Tsakarestou to choose one goal from the United Nations’ “Sustainable Development Goals’’ list, we were immediately drawn to Goal Number 10: Reduced Inequalities. Our team cannot conceive that inequalities based on race, ethnicity, income, sex, age, sexual orientation, disability, class, religion and opportunity still exist in modern societies on such a large scale. Of course, since the topic that we chose is quite general, we had to decide upon one specific form of inequality and focus our project on it. We all agreed that we should broach the topic of racism and unequal treatment due to race and ethnicity, as it is a phenomenon that occurs frequently in our country and causes a lot of problems and is a main source of social injustice.
About Sustainable Development Goal No 10:
Racism is one of the most serious problems that modern societies are forced to face. It takes many forms and can happen in many places. It includes prejudice, discrimination or hatred directed at someone because of their color, ethnicity or national origin. People often associate racism with acts of abuse or harassment. However, it does not need to involve violent or intimidating behavior. It can also be racial name-calling, demeaning jokes or even situations when people may be excluded from groups or activities because of their race or where they come from.
While racism has no biological foundation, the socio-economic and political structures that dispossess and exploit people of color, coupled with widespread misinformation about race, cultures and ethnic groups, make racism one of the most intractable forms of injustice. Especially in our country, with the advent of hundreds of thousands of refugees during the past few years, the number of racism- related incidents has increased dramatically. In 2018, the Racist Violence Recording Network documented, through interviews with victims, 117 incidents of racist violence with more than 130 victims. In 74 incidents the victims were migrants or refugees, that is people of different ethnic origins, religion and color.
In the social survey that we carried out, which we discuss below, most people answered that they believe that becoming familiar with different cultures is the first step in combating racist behaviors- which is how we came up with the idea of the “Taste The World Athens’’.
Our Survey
After carrying out a social survey, we realized that- despite the appeals for tolerance that are being promoted- the problem of racism still exists. People from different countries, ages and cultures took part in our social survey. According to the survey’s statistics, 70.6% of the respondents were between the ages of 18 and 24 years old. Therefore, most of the respondents were young people, i.e. the ‘’New Generation’’. It is no secret that the ‘’New Generation’’ have a totally different mentality, opinions and views compared to their elders. As a result, the majority of the views from the survey are those of the young people.
Most of our respondents (87.3%) belong to the white/Caucasian race but there were some from the black/African race, too. However, all of them (100%) agreed that racism is apparent in our country.
Based on the social survey, we noticed that a large number of people (47.1% of our respondents) have witnessed either racist behavior or a racist attack towards another person due to his/her race, at least once in their lifetime. This means that even if we try to manifest ourselves as an open-minded society, by showing people of all races in advertisements and movies, electing women or black people to high political positions (e.g. Angela Merkel, Barack Obama etc.), unfortunately racism still exists. People from our survey inspired us to come up with our own suggestion in order to help minimize the problem of inequality. As we wanted to address a specific aspect of this issue, racial discrimination, we decided to try and bring people closer to each other with the project we created. When we asked our respondents for their suggestions as to how we could reduce inequalities, their answers included ideas such as: organizing events, placing more emphasis on racism in education, volunteering, governmental intervention etc.
We also conducted research where we looked for European cities where there are food halls or street food markets. To our surprise, Greece was one of the exceptions, since there are no cities in Greece where there are food halls or permanent street food markets. Stockholm in Sweden, St. Petersburg and Moscow in Russia, Madrid in Spain, Paris and Bordeaux in France are just some of the European cities that provide their citizens with the chance to enjoy a variety of international dishes. However, as our research indicated, none of these food halls have the same objective as our “Taste the World Athens”, which is intended to have a global identity. Finally, we thought that we could combine food tasting with specially organized events that will accompany the different cultural taste experiences.
‘’Taste the World Athens’’ is born…
A food hall is a collection of small, locally-developed restaurant concepts or completely new creations that are developed by local chefs or start-up entrepreneurs and restauranteurs. They offer an assortment of unique food and beverage items that are usually made from scratch (prepared from raw ingredients) or nearby in a commissary (but still from scratch). Our idea, ‘’Taste the World Athens’’ is a food hall like the ones we just described, with the only difference being that the small restaurants that comprise it include cuisines from all around the globe! The main idea behind our international food hall in the heart of Athens is to bring people together by having them taste different food from all around the world.
However, it was not easy for our team to end up associating with this issue. Firstly, we had a brainstorming session to find out how we could achieve goal number 10 about Reduced Inequalities. One of our thoughts was to connect the reduction of inequalities with culture. Since food is something we all love and at the same time it represents culture, we found it very interesting to generate a hall that brings people closer to each other via dishes from all over the world.
Right after that, we decided to conduct an e-survey. More specifically, we compiled a questionnaire to investigate people’s opinion on how food can affect people’s bonding and contribute to reducing inequalities. We came to the conclusion that most people recognize the severity of the problem of racial discrimination in our country while, at the same time, they like eating food from other countries and trying different and new tastes. Moreover, we verified that food connects people regardless of their origin, sex and culture. Therefore, considering all the above, we came up with the idea “Taste the World Athens’’: a food hall based in the city of Athens. The idea came to us from a food festival that takes place in Athens every year and lasts for a month. We were also inspired by a permanent food hall in the city of Aarhus, Denmark, that we visited last year. The very last offers many different types of food in an outdoor market and it is known as ‘street food’. To be more specific, we decided to create a food hall that could unite people via their different culinary preferences from all around the world. “Taste the World Athens” will include canteens, markets and kiosks which will serve street food and sell delicacies from different countries. Each kiosk could represent a certain country. For example, our visitors will be able to go to the kiosk of Japan to taste delicious, fresh sushi bites and after that they can visit the kiosk of France to enjoy a hot crepe. Our hall will also include weekly or monthly events where chefs from Greece and other parts of the world will cook delicious dishes and possibly give simple cooking courses on special recipes of their local cuisine. There could also be “themed nights’’ such as Mexican nights with Mariachi music, a tribute to South African cuisine with local dancers and fun activities and games for both children and adults, such as blind food tasting. In the future, we are also planning to put special emphasis on two goals: to educate people against food waste and to make them aware of global starvation.
Our collaboration and the difficulties
Since we are dealing with the wide and controversial issue of reducing inequalities, it was quite challenging for us to think of an unconventional way to achieve the goal. Nonetheless, we had plenty of ideas about the topic and we did not find it hard as a team to come up with the idea of using food for this project. The next challenge was to find the way by which our goal, i.e. the idea of reducing inequality by using food, would be accomplished. We wanted to find an effective and innovative action, hence the idea of the food hall came up. Then we had to involve ourselves with the details of the whole project: we had to decide where and how the hall would be set up, how large it would be, who would help us to create it and who would participate. Furthermore, we needed something that could differentiate “Taste the World” from other other existing food halls, as this project aims at a certain goal: reducing inequalities while people also have fun. Thinking of how we could encourage people to visit “Taste the World”, we thought that it would be a good idea to carry out a test run. Thus, not only would we see if our idea would actually attract interest, but it would also let a group of people know about our idea and if they were satisfied, they could be our first guests and spread the message! Finally, in order to come up with a catchy name for our food hall which would illustrate what we are trying to do, we agreed to “Taste the World” as the best choice. Therefore, through hard work and good team-work, we managed to overcome all the difficulties and achieve our objective.
Target group
When deciding upon the target group for our project, we considered who would be interested in coming to the ‘’Taste the World’’ food hall. When it comes to food, everyone is equal and everyone- regardless of their color, race and social background- enjoys eating. So we believe that the opening of the food hall, at which various types of food from all over the world will be served, will be of interest to all persons. As a result, there is no limitation to our target group. We want everyone to participate in our ‘’international food party’’ and taste the best dishes made by talented chefs. So, what we will have is a large number of people, young and old, both locals and tourists coming together and tasting food from other countries. In this way, people will expand their knowledge by associating and coming into contact with other peoples’ culture and way of living. As previously mentioned, we would also like to attract tourists since they could also contribute to the mixing of cultures that we are trying to achieve. It would also be important to attract people that work in the food business. That is because it is important to get ideas from specialists and surround ourselves with people that have a wide knowledge of our topic. As for the special events, which are going to take place once a month in our food hall, these would be open to everyone, without exception: individuals, groups of friends, families and all other visitors. We aim to make “Taste the World” a meeting point that gives its customers the chance to meet new people, understand and respect other ethnic groups by taking part in this mixing of cultures. The idea behind our project is equality and respect towards every single person on earth and also understanding that no matter where we come from, what we believe in or how we look like, we are all the same!
Our social media
Then we faced the challenge of publicizing our project, “Taste the World”, and making it known to people not only from Greece, but also from abroad. The first thing our team did was to create accounts in social media. We chose Facebook and Instagram because they are more frequently used by the majority of people, especially by young persons and thus these two social media platforms have the greatest influence. Advertising through Instagram and Facebook is an effective, yet costless, way to convey our message. We hope that public understanding will increase, as people will become more sensitive about the issue of inequalities and participate in our efforts to reduce them by visiting our food hall ‘’Taste the World Athens’’.
Bringing “Taste the World Athens” to life…
Thinking of how we could start bringing our ‘’Taste the World Athens’’ food hall startup to life, our team decided to carry out two actions. The first one was a visit to the restaurant Kozi’s, which is a well-known restaurant with tasty dishes based on South African cuisine. A member of our team happened to know the owner of this restaurant, so it was not very difficult for us to approach Mr. Kozi Tzanos (whose first name is the South African abbreviation of Constantinos) and have an interesting discussion with him.
The owner of Kozi’s seemed to enjoy our talk and he encouraged us to keep working on our project in order to bring it to life. He also said that he would be willing to participate in our food hall himself and told us that each dish represents the person who makes it and that cooking and food bring people closer together.
After our discussion was finished, we moved to…action! Mr. Kozi accepted our request and took us with him to the kitchen area, where the chefs gave us a short seminar about Boerewors, a kind of sausage and one of the most famous African specialties.
For the second action of our team, (and — of course — in order to test what we learnt about Boerewors) we decided to organize a themed school bazaar. The name of our event was “Taste the World”, just like the name of our food hall. Fortunately, one of our team member’s mother happens to be the school principal of a High School in Athens, so we managed to organize the bazaar with the extra help of schoolteachers, members of the students’ families and some other friends and acquaintances. They all helped with the preparation of various recipes from many different countries and regions around the world, such as the Vietnamese ‘Pho Ga’, the Portuguese egg tart pastries (Pastel de Nata) and of course Italian pizza, African Boerewors and many other delicious dishes. The result was a rainbow of food and cultures!
The money that we raised was donated to the institution «Ένα παιδί, ένας κόσμος» (“One child, one world”), where one of our team members carries out voluntary work. The objective of this institution is to provide help and advice to the children of immigrants and their parents (most of which are black), who face some serious difficulties in adapting to their new environment. As a result, not only did we enjoy ourselves in organizing this bazaar, but we also raised money that could be used to make some people happy. Everyone who participated in the “Taste the World” bazaar, both children and adults, thanked us wholeheartedly and assured us that they would be our first visitors when our food hall would open. Needless to say that the feeling we got was priceless and made the effort, the hard work and the tiredness for our project worthwhile. If all the people who come to ‘’Taste the World Athens’’ get a similar feeling as we did at the school bazaar, this would definitely make our project successful. In addition to this, (and since our visit took place right after Christmas holidays) people from “One child, One world”, in order to express their gratitude and appreciation, honored us with the “Elf’s certificate”, as they call it, accompanied by some other little presents.
Finally, as we wanted to talk to a Greek chef, we managed to contact Lampros Vakiaros, a well-known chef, who was the winner of the ‘’Greek Master Chef’’ contest in 2017. We shared our idea with him and asked for his opinion as to what he believed would be the impact of our food hall. He gave us some very useful tips and feedback, which motivated us to continue. As Mr. Vakiaros stated: “All chefs strongly support that culture is directly connected to food.” We also asked him if he would be interested in participating in “Taste the World Athens” representing Greek cuisine. His response was positive which was very heartening for us since such an important chef was so responsive. This left us excited and energized to carry on with our project!
Conclusion
While at first glance the idea of combating racism with food may sound strange, based on the work we did and the reactions, we feel it would be worth pursuing such a project and hopefully, by introducing people to other cultures through food, we can help reduce racism in our country.
Betty Tsakarestou Δήμητρα Κιοϊλόγλου Rigo Pelidis Amanda Linara Elizabeth Koliada
